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For decades, Hong Kong has held a place of historical, geopolitical, economic, cultural and environmental interests to South-East Asia and the wider world. The rapid and transformational changes that Hong Kong continues to undergo provide fresh opportunities to reassess and reflect upon the city, in ways that illuminate broader phenomena and global trends. The Hong Kong Research Hub is affiliated with Nanyang Technological University at Singapore. We aim to build a research network in South-East Asia to complement and collaborate with existing initiatives in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world. The hub hosts seminar series and other scholarly events that would be of interest to both academics and non-academics, the scope of which is intended to be broadly interdisciplinary, welcoming a range of methodologies and areas of study which shed new light on Hong Kong’s past, present and future.
Dr. Florence MOK is a Nanyang Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University. She is a historian of colonial Hong Kong, modern China and British colonialism. She received her PhD in History from the University of York in 2019. Her current project studies the history of water crises and management in Hong Kong during from 1945 to the 1980s. Florence’s first monograph, Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966-97 is recently published by the Studies in Imperialism series by Manchester University Press. She has also published peer-reviewed articles in well-respected interdisciplinary and historical journals, such as The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, The Historical Journal and Modern Asian Studies; her China Information article won the Eduard B. Vermeer Best Article Prize in 2019 and the ICAS Best Article Prize on Global Hong Kong Studies in 2021. She is also the Series of ‘Cold War in Asia and Beyond’ in Amsterdam University Press.
Dr. Kiu-wai CHU (BA London; MPhil Cantab; PhD HK) is Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities and Chinese Studies in Nanyang Technological University. He is Luce East Asia Fellow 2022-23 at the National Humanities Center, U.S.A. He was Postdoctoral Fellows in University of Zurich and Western Sydney University. His research focuses on environmental humanities, ecocriticism, human-animal studies, and contemporary cinema, media and literature in East and Southeast Asia.
He is the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies (Routledge, 2023) and Coming of Age in Chinese Literature and Cinema: Sinophone Variations of the Bildungsorman (Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming in 2024). His work has appeared in Oxford Bibliographies; books such as Transnational Ecocinema; Animated Landscapes; Ecomedia: Key Issues; The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema; Cli-fi: A Companion; Chinese Environmental Humanities; and journals Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture; Journal of Chinese Cinemas; Journal of Chinese Governance; Asian Cinema; photographies; Screen; ASAP/J, and elsewhere.
He is currently a Living Lexicon Co-editor of journal Environmental Humanities (Duke U.P.), and an elected Executive Council Member of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE-US) (2021-23). He is also an editorial advisory board member of journals ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (Oxford U.P.), Media+Environment (University of California Press), Journal of Environmental Media (Intellect Books), and the book series "Green Media" (Amsterdam U.P.); "African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities" (Brill); "Entanglements: Rethinking Comparison in the Long Contemporary" (HKU Press), and "Liverpool Studies in Literature and Environment" (Liverpool U.P.).
Dr. Jack GREATREX is a Research Fellow in the History Department at Nanyang Technological University. He completed a PhD on the bodily, discursive, economic, and infrastructural histories of ‘pests’ in colonial Hong Kong and Malaya, undertaken at the University of Hong Kong. Before this, he read the World History MPhil and the undergraduate history tripos at the University of Cambridge. His research is located at the conjunctions of colonial, environmental, medical, and multi-species histories in Asia and the Pacific.
Dr. Siu-hei LAI is Lecturer at Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He is an anthropologist focusing on youth, aspiration and Chinese migration in Mainland Southeast Asia. Obtained his PhD in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong , his doctoral thesis examines how the young Yunnanese Chinese in the Thai-Burmese borderland pursue their aspirations by migrating within and beyond the borderland. Previously, he was Research Fellow at History Department, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Department of Anthropology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Miss Doris CHAN is a PhD student in the History Department at Nanyang technological University, Singapore. She completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of Hong Kong and her master’s at King’s College London. She is interested in the transnational history of Hong Kong, the history of British Empire in East and Southeast Asia, overseas Chinese, migration and colonial connections.
Mr. Sahil BHAGAT is a Research Associate in the History Department at Nanyang Technological University. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of St Andrews and a joint master’s degree from Columbia University and the London School of Economics (LSE). His work pertains to the transnational labour and environmental histories of plantation-based communities in British Malaya and Singapore.
Mr. Niklas FUNG is a Research Associate in the History Department at Nanyang Technological University. He completed his bachelor's degree in history and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Bonn, Germany, and his master's degree in colonial history at the London School of Economics. His research interest lies in exploring the role of the colonial state in creating colonial identities, particularly through popular culture and media.