Hong Kong Studies Association Annual Conference 2025

Date: 13-14 June 2025 

Location: Cardiff University  

Theme:  (Re)envisioning Hong Kong(s)  

Summary

What is ‘Hong Kong’? For nearly a century, Hong Kong has served as a geographic space for trans-local, -cultural, and -national encounters under the unique context of British colonialism and China’s One-country-two-system rule, shaping its place, people, and politics. Despite waves of emigration from the territory in the 1980s and 1990s, Hong Kong as a subject in the global context has often been subsumed or assimilated into broader categories or labels. However, this academic imagination of ‘Hong Kong’ falls short in the post-2019/post-National Security Law era, where an exodus of Hongkongers actively seeks agency, capacity, and influence, they are reimagining what it means to be "Hong Kong" or "Hongkonger" in new localities and trans-local contexts. This movement has sparked bottom-up attempts to revitalise Hong Kong's global cultural and intellectual presence, including its arts, languages, and ideas. It has also fostered new forms of social, cultural, educational, linguistic, and political engagement, creating dynamic landscapes across local, international, and virtual spaces.   

In these complex contexts, Hong Kong can no longer be encapsulated by a singular academic framework. Simultaneously, the emergence of new Hong Kongs in diverse localities reveals and unsettles previously unnoticed or unquestioned structures of both ‘Hong Kong’ and their new habitats. In light of these developments, ‘Hong Kong’ may become a placeholder for subjects to study, reproduce, and reimagine; lenses to uncover existing social-cultural-political relationalities and structures within local, national, and global contexts; and novel phenomena shaped by Hongkongers navigating their new environments.   

This year’s Hong Kong Studies Association Annual Conference, held over two days, aims to expand the horizons of Hong Kong Studies by examining the diverse and multifaceted concept of "Hong Kongs." The conference poses a central question: How can we innovate theories, methods, and practices to better understand, capture, and reimagine the subjects or subjectivities encompassed by the term "Hong Kong"—including but not limited to a place, a culture, a lived experience and/or a concept?  

Programme

[Day 1] 31 May

12:00-12:30 |Opening remarks 

12:30-14:00  |  Parallel Sessions I 

Identities and communities (Part 1) 

Bridging generations: Hong Kong migrant networks in Australia 

• Yvette  TO (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) 

Minor Transnationalism: Language Ideologies and Welsh Learning Among Hong Kong Migrants 

• Elaine CHUNG; Ka Long TUNG (Cardiff University) 

Problematising the 'ethnic minority' label: belonging, identity, and nomenclature in Hong Kong 

• Keenan Daniel MANNING (University of British Columbia) 

Hong Kong: A Possessable Said Category 

• Terry AU-YEUNG (Cardiff)  

Hong Kong’s Global Cultural Preservation after the 2019-2020 Anti-ELAB Movement 

The (G)local Web? Hong Kong Internet Fiction in the Post-Protest Era 

• Heather INWOOD (Cambridge)

Distorted Bodies and Language in Contemporary Hong Kong Fiction in Translation 

• Cleo LI-SCHWARTZ (Cambridge) 

Resisting a Cultural Disappearance: Comparing Two Preservation Projects by Diasporic Hongkongers 

• Nathan TSANG (Southern California) 

Normality, Normativity and Disguise of the Everyday and Spectacular Hong Kong: a Comparative Analysis of Paintings by Hong Kong and UK-based Artists 

• Jesse NG (Cambridge) 

14:00-14:15 | Tea Break  

14:15-15:45 | PHD panel

Reimagining Hong Kong Erotic Cinema: Li Han-Hsiang and the Cultural Politics of Fengyue Films 

• Ruoyi BIAN (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)  

For the Sake of Youths?: Examining Hong Kong Migrants’ Family Migration 

Decision-making and Migratory Experiences in the UK through Socio-materialism 

• Chun Hong YAN (University of Southampton)  

Asylum-seeking Hongkongers' Experiences with the UK Mental Health Services 

• On Kee Angel CHAN (University of Surrey) 

Flexible Citizenship and Fragmented Identity in Postcolonial Hong Kong 

• Marco SBREGLIA (Sapienza, University of Rome and The University of Silesia in Katowice) 

Asylum-seeking Hongkongers' Experiences with the UK Mental Health Services 

• Alvin HUI (University of Bristol) 

15:45-16:00 | Tea Break 

16:00-17:30 | Parallel Sessions II 

Identities and communities (Part 2) 

Time, space, you and I: Exploring the migration theme in Hong Kong Cantopop 

• Vicky HO  (Toronto Metropolitan University)  

Constructing Integrity: The ICAC’s Role in Shaping Hong Kong’s Anti-Corruption Identity Through Public Media Campaigns 

• Wendy Siuyi WONG (York University)  

Hong Kong is Burning: Oral Histories of the Hong Kong Ballroom Community within the Global Voguing Culture Context 

• Qiyu XU (The University of Hong Kong) 

“Hongkong” as a localist and international concept: Contribution from secondary education development, 1950–1981 

• Luna LIU (University of Oxford) 

Theoretical and methodological approaches 

Walking Kowloon: From Hung Hom to To Kwa Wan 

• Louis LO (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) 

Why Do Most Who Say They Want Emigrate Never Do So and Emigrants Take So Long to Emigrate? 

• Jacob Thomas (Corvinus University of Budapest) 

Blurring Boundaries: The Cultural Exploration of “Kongcept” 

• Don HONG (Kongcept/Liverpool) 

Learning (British Architecture) from Hong Kong 

• Yat Shun Juliana KEI (University of Liverpool) 

17:30-17:45 | Tea Break

17:45-18:30 | Theory and Methods in HK Research Roundtable  

• Lead Discussant: Paul Morris, University College of London

19:00 | Reception/Dinner

[Day 2]  14 June

9:00-9:30 | Registration


9:30-10:45 | HKSA Keynote Address and Q&A 

(Re)envisioning realities in practice: what can “Studies” projects do?

• Professor Meaghan MORRIS (University of Sydney)  

11:45-11:00 | Tea Break  

11:00-12:30 | Parallel Sessions III 

Cultural Expression and Heritage (Part 1)  

Writing in Transitional Paragraph: Navigating Structure of Feelings through Wall Writing in Hong Kong 

• Ng Sum LEUNG (University of Oxford) 

Hong Kong Arts: A book project reimagining the historical city through different art forms 

• Lee CHENG (Anglia Ruskin University) 

Coded Laughter: Disappearance, Extraterritoriality, and the Post-Nonsensical Comedy of Dayo Wong 

• Wayne WONG (University of Sheffield) 

What Sorts of Stories Shall We Tell About Hong Kong?: How Hong Kongers’ React To the Government’s Demands to Globally Repair Their City’s Reputation 

• Jacob Thomas (Corvinus University of Budapest) 

From Hand to Lens to Code: Evolving Representations of Hong Kong Through Comics, Moving Images, and Games

Graphic Memoirs as Cultural Memory: Reimagining Hong Kong through Ko Sing’s Fu Chong Chok Lok 

• Amelia CHU (Ghent University) 

Floating City as an Offscreen Imaginary: Reimagining and Reassembling ‘Hong Kongs’ Past, Present, and Future 

• Gigi Wai-Chi WONG (Western University)

Reconstructing Hong Kong in Games: A Cultural-Historical Analysis 

• Poki CHAN (Concordia University)

12:30-14:00 | PhD Paper Award Ceremony and Lunch 

14:00-15:30 | Parallel Sessions IV

Cultural Expression and Heritage (Part 2) 

Symbiosis as Possibilities in Retaining Space for Artistic Quality under The Transition of Arts Funding Model in Hong Kong 

• Dorcas YEUNG (The University of Melbourne)

The making of video city in Hong Kong: A media archeology perspective, 1960s - 1990s 

• Klavier WANG (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)

Sing it Again: Music, Lyrics, and Identity in Parody Cover Songs in Hong Kong 

• Priscilla TSE (Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts) 

Geopoetics, Hong Kong Popular Music, Culture of Disappearance, Music Medley, Articulations of Place 

• Man Po WONG (University College London)

Translocal Hong Kong 

Translocal Relations and Cross-cultural Storytelling: Screening and Viewing Films from Hong Kong in Vancouver 

• Helena WU; Jimmy LO (University of British Columbia) 

Relocated Solidarity: From pro-democracy movements to the post-2019 Hongkonger Diaspora in the UK 

• Sui-Ting KONG (Durham University); Stevi JACKSON (University of York) and Petula Sik-ying HO (University of Hong Kong)  

Global citizens or Hongkongers: Diasporic future of children from Hong Kong immigrants 

• Miu Chung YAN; Capri K.P. KONG (University of British Columbia) 

Hong Kongers as Virtual Reality: Romanticization of Diasporic Identity and the Paradox of Nowhere-ness  

• Ellie SZETO ( Community Researcher); Rick SIN (York Center for Asian Research) and Kennedy Chi-pan WONG (University of South California)  

15:30-15:45  | Tea Break 

15:45-16:45 | Global Perspectives and Connections

Transnational Solidarities Beyond ‘Chineseness’: Queer Geopolitics and Political Imaginaries between Hong Kong and Taiwan 

• Eva Cheuk-Yin LI (Lancaster University) 

Hong Kong in the Global Economy from Colonialism to the National Security Order

Ho-fung HUNG (Johns Hopkins University) 

16:45-17:00 | Closing and Feedback

17:00-18:30  | Film Screening

Black Bauhinia with Director Q&A  (Public event held in partnership with Nomad Reading Darllen Nomad C.B.C)