HKU Academic Receives UGC Teaching Award 2026

Dr Michael Rivera, Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Science of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has received the 2026 UGC Teaching Award (“Early Career Faculty Members” category) by the University Grants Committee (UGC).

The UGC Teaching Award recognizes outstanding teaching performance, achievements, leadership, and scholarly contributions to teaching and learning within and across universities at UGC-funded institutions.

Dr Rivera is Hong Kong's first university lecturer to teach courses dedicated to biological anthropology and human diversity, employing humanistic forms of teaching. He aims to promote community-centred and publicly engaged teaching as a vital imperative for the future of higher education across Hong Kong’s universities.

As Hong Kong's first biological anthropologist, Dr Rivera teaches a big Common Core mega-course 'All You've Ever Wanted to Know About Humans', CCST9081 focusing on human variation and evolution. He utilises active, inquiry-based labs to handle skeletal material and learn methods used in bioarchaeology and forensic science. These strategies help students confront misconceptions about human development, foster ethical thinking, and develop a sense of civic duty through scientific knowledge. Students also learn how anthropological science contributes to significant societal issues.

Dr Rivera’s university-level course on race and racism issues is the first in Hong Kong and the unique in all of Asia. It integrates elements of critical race theory (CRT) with story-sharing and anti-racist praxis. The course covers the local and the global, the historical and the contemporary, as well as scientific and sociopolitical understandings of race. Through this course, students develop critical consciousness and transformative insights, enable them to engage thoughtfully with issues of race in Hong Kong and beyond. He is also promoting the “ENGAGE” project with HKU colleagues, which provide students with feedback and encouragement to enhance their confidence in communicating to public audiences.

Dr Rivera said, “Drawing on care theorists and recent higher education scholarship, my courses are embedded with care ethics, which emphasize values of respect, trust, responsiveness, empathy, and community-building in university teaching. I treat teaching as a relational practice, rather than content delivery or training for work readiness. Assignments and course activities are designed to foreground emotional health, holistic development, and inclusive values, to ensure students feel seen and supported.” 

About Dr. Michael Rivera
Dr. Michael Rivera is a biological anthropologist, writer, public speaker and interdisciplinary researcher. Obtaining his PhD in 2019 from the University of Cambridge, his main research focuses on how humans have evolved and adapted biologically and culturally over the last six million years. His PhD research involved reconstructing the diets, health profiles, physical activities and body shapes of ancient humans. Through analysis of ancient bones and teeth, he is most interested in how active and healthy the lifestyles and diets were of ancient peoples living in coastal environments – particularly in East and Southeast Asia, and in the Baltic region of northeastern Europe.

Other interests include heritage and museums, cultural identity, food studies, ethnographic documentary-making and visual anthropology, decolonial theory and praxis, the history of race/ism and contemporary racial justice issues, social media and digital technologies, public engagement and science communication, and archaeology/anthropology more broadly.