Kevin Yam
Kevin Yam is a Law Academic Associate and PhD Candidate at Melbourne Law School. He has Bachelor of Laws (Honours), Master of Commerce and Master of Laws degrees from the University of Melbourne. Prior to returning to Australia in 2022, Kevin worked as a commercial lawyer in Hong Kong, including more than 8 years as a partner at a private practice and as an in-house lawyer at a Big Four accounting firm. He is an active advocate for the rule of law, democracy and human rights in Hong Kong, and was a founding co-convenor of the now defunct Hong Kong Progressive Lawyers Group. He regularly appears in interviews and writes commentaries for Australian, international and Hong Kong media to give views on Hong Kong, China, and Australia-China relations issues, and is fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. Despite being an Australian citizen, he is one of several people on whom the Beijing-appointed Hong Kong authorities placed a bounty two years ago.
Rowan Callick OBE FAIIA
Rowan Callick OBE FAIIA is an Industry Fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute, an expert associate at the National Security College of the Australian National University, and vice chair of the Australia Taiwan Business Council. He is an advisory board member of the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, and of Melbourne University’s Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies. He was both China Correspondent and Asia-Pacific Editor for both the Australian Financial Review and The Australian, based in Hong Kong and later Beijing. He was appointed in 2013 a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and was awarded the OBE in 2015 on the recommendation of the government of Papua New Guinea, where he worked for a decade. He has won two Walkley Awards, and the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year. He has written three books published in English and Chinese, including “Comrades & Capitalists: Hong Kong Since the Handover” (UNSW Press).