Alvin is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He examines law as a site of negotiation between technology and socio-cultural meaning. He’s interested in how legally-oriented ideas evolve in response to technological and social change. His recent works critically engage with digital property and distributed ledger regimes, AI and machine learning, focusing on how these technologies influence legal thinking across different legal traditions. Alvin also writes on property law, labour relations and the humanities, with a regional interest in China and Southeast Asia.

His work has appeared in leading journals such as The Cambridge Law Journal, Big Data and Society, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, International Journal of Law in Context, Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, Asian Journal of Law and Society, Work, Employment and Society, Law and Critique, Law, Culture and the Humanities, Legal Ethics, as well as several U.S.-based tech law journals. 

Alvin holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an LLB from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before transitioning to academia, he practiced as a solicitor in Hong Kong.

Journal Articles

• “DAO as Rhizome: Reimagining Rules, Governance, and Organisations” Law and Critique (2025)
• “The Roots of Private Property: Native Vegetation Laws and Murder in The Winter Road” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2025) (with Amelia Dale)
• “The Emergence of ‘Newcomer Injunctions’: Wolverhampton City Council v London Gypsies and Travellers” (2025) 84(1) Cambridge Law Journal 35
• “Chip Legislative Endeavors in the United States and European Union: A Comparative Analysis Based on China’s Disruptive Production Technologies” (2024) University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology, & Policy 297
• “Legal Consciousness and the Crypto Phenomenon: Property Ideologies, Innovation, and Potential Ramifications on Financial System Stability” (2024) 20(4) International Journal of Law in Context 598
• “Evolution of Intangible Property to Crypto-Assets: Legal Pragmatism in Anglo-American Common Law and Chinese Civil Law” (2024) 12 Chinese Journal of Comparative Law
• “The Curious Case of Blockchain in Rural China: Unravelling Power, Profit, and Surveillance” (2024) 11(2) Big Data and Society
• “Cryptoasset Fraud: An Unknown Quantity?” (2024) 8082 New Law Journal 15
• “The Role of Boundary-Spanners in the Control of a Chinese Garment Factory in Myanmar” (2024) 38(5) Work, Employment and Society 1333
• ‘Reexamining the integrative approach to legal ethics education: the case of Hong Kong as an Asian financial centre’ (2023) 26 Legal Ethics 219
• “Filial Piety across Legal Systems: Analyzing the Influence of Traditional Chinese Legal Culture of Property in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China” (2023) 18(2) Asian Journal of Comparative Law 137
• “Examining the AI-Based Biometric Surveillance Data Collected by Employers: A Review Based on Federal and State Laws Protecting Employee Privacy Rights” (2023) 41 Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal 25
• “How has the Legal Consciousness of Chinese Enterprise Managers Transformed since 1949? A Study of Chinese Enterprises under Socialism” (2022) 9(2) Asian Journal of Law and Society 286
• “Did Exclusion Ignite China’s Drive to Compete in Space Station Technology? An Analysis of the Techno-Legal Implications of the Wolf Amendment (2011)” (2022) 1 University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology and Policy 119
• “I’m Afraid: The Cultural Challenges in Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork and Interviews in Myanmar” (2020) 21(2) Qualitative Research Journal 113 (with Aung Myo Min)

Book Chapters

• “Digital Assets from a Socio-Legal Perspective”, in Jason Grant Allen, Simon Gleeson and Peter Hunn (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Digital Assets and the Law (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
• “Blockchain and Humanity: Rethinking Techno-Libertarianism”, in John Flood and Lachlan Robb (eds.), Blockchain Handbook on Law and Society (De Gruyter, forthcoming)
• “Ethnography”, in Jan Smits and Nuno Garoupa (eds.), Handbook on Research Methods in Labour Law (Edward Elgar, 2024)
• “The Unaesthetic Complexity of the Image of Xiezhi in Representing the Jurisprudence in Ancient and Modern China” in Kamil Zeidler and Joanna Kamień (eds), Aesthetics of Law: From Methodology to Manifestations (Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, 2024) 277–94.
• “Shaping Narratives of Anti-Corruption Through Popular Culture: An Analysis of the ‘Storm’ Film Series”, in Séagh Kehoe and Gerda Wielander (eds.), Cultural China 2021: The Contemporary China Centre Review (University of Westminster Press, 2022)

Conference Papers and Invited Seminars

• “The Algorithm of Authority: Human-Centric AI in China’s State capitalism and Confucian tradition” – School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University, 6 May 2025
• “The Roots of Private Property: Native Vegetation Laws and Murder in The Winter Road” – Legal Imaginaries, Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia Conference 2024, University of Hong Kong, 16–18 December 2024
• “Legal Consciousness and Crypto-Assets: Implication of Property and Innovation Ideologies on Financial System Stability” – University of Oxford, 2 May 2024
• “Use of Tokens and Smart Contracts in Real Estate: A Legal Framework for Protecting Rights and Equity” – King’s College London, 30 April 2024
• “DAO as Rhizome: Reimagining Rules, Governance, and Organisations” – Deus Ex Machina: Law – Technology – Humanities, Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia Conference 2023, Queensland University of Technology, 11–14 December 2023
• “Adapting Traditional Chinese Legal Culture to Westernised Property Law: A Comparative Study of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan” – Joint Conference of the Asian Law Schools Association (ALSA) and Hong Kong Commercial and Maritime Law Centre (HKCML), City University of Hong Kong, 13 January 2023
• “Boundary Spanners as Control Mechanism in the Multicultural Work Environment of Organisations” – Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC) Doctoral Conference 2022, University of Leeds, 20 May 2022
• “Intercultural Conflicts in Foreign-Invested Factories: The Methodological and Cultural Challenges in Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork in Myanmar” – Reimagining Justice and Ethnography, 5th Annual Postgraduate Law Conference, University of Strathclyde, 29–30 April 2021
• “Construing ‘Family Property’ in Westernised Property Law: Analysing the Influence of Traditional Chinese Legal Culture on Contemporary Chinese Courts” – Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Annual Conference 2021, Cardiff University, 30 March – 1 April 2021
• “The Cultural Challenges in Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork in Myanmar” – Postgraduate Socio-Legal Methodology Workshop, University of Birmingham, 18 November 2020
• “Managing Intercultural Conflicts with Key Stakeholders of Foreign Direct Investment: A Study from the Lens of Legal Culture of Chinese Private Enterprises in Myanmar” – Research Symposium 2019, Oxford Hong Kong Scholars Association, University of Oxford, 9 February 2019