Two UH Law School Professors Receive Fulbright Awards

Conner and Antolini selected to teach law at universities in China and Italy

University of Hawaiʻi
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Posted: Jun 2, 2003

The U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board recently selected two professors from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa to teach law next year at foreign universities. Professor Alison W. Conner was awarded a Distinguished Lectureship in Law at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and Assistant Professor Denise Antolini was selected as the 2003-2004 Distinguished Chair in Environmental Studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin in Turin, Italy.

Recipients of Fulbright awards are considered extraordinary leaders in their fields and have demonstrated dedication to academic and professional achievement.

Conner, who has been with the School of Law since 1995, previously served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nanjing‘s Department of Law during the 1983-84 academic year. She was named Outstanding Professor of Law for the 2000-2001 academic year, and in 2002 she was awarded a UH Mānoa Chancellor‘s Citation for Meritorious Teaching. She currently teaches courses on Chinese and Asian Law as well as Corporations, and serves as the director of the School of Law‘s new LL.M. Program for International Lawyers. She earned her PhD in Chinese and Southeast Asian history at Cornell University and her JD at Harvard Law School, where she specialized in Asian and comparative law. At Tsinghua University, she will teach graduate courses in comparative and U.S. law and will participate in a legal education reform project.

Antolini will serve as the Distinguished Chair in Environmental Studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin teaching an undergraduate and graduate course in environmental law in the urban planning department. Antolini joined the UH School of Law in 1996 to teach environmental law and torts. In addition to serving as Co-Director of the Environmental Law Program, she coaches the highly successful Environmental Law Moot Court Team.

Antolini is past chair of the Natural Resources Section of the Hawaiʻi State Bar Association and received the Hawaiʻi Women Lawyers 2002 award for Distinguished Community Service. She earned her JD at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Distinguished Chair award is the highest level of the Fulbright Scholar Program, which presents more than 800 faculty and professionals in the United States with grants to lecture or research abroad each year. Antolini will be moving with her family to Turin for the 2003-2004 academic year for her sabbatical and the Fulbright teaching scholarship.