A specialist in the Pacific World, I have broad research and teaching interests in Chinese maritime and territorial frontiers, the Qing Empire, colonial and postcolonial Vietnam, as well as U.S. foreign affairs. My latest academic publication, “Solace and Solidarity in Exile,” is a long-form review essay that weaves a New Qing History of imperial peripheries into contemporary Tibetan, Uyghur, and Hong Kong experiences of displacement. It leads the China and Inner Asia section in the November 2024 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies. The courses I offer are China II: From Empire to Nation(s) and The Makings of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos on the Hilltop campus and Sino-American Relations Since 1776 on the Capitol campus.

I hold a B.A. in History & Journalism (2016) and an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought (2017) from New York University — the school that bestowed on Taylor Swift her honorary doctorate of fine arts! My senior honors thesis, “Music Below the Lion Rock,” chronicles how the evolution of transnational Cantopop reflected four exciting decades of sociopolitical change in Hong Kong. My master’s thesis, “Pearl of the Orient Reconstructed,” traces how Hong Kongers, as a non-self-governing people, were denied the right of self-determination — and thus a decolonized future — against the Cold War’s backdrop.

I’ve presented at major conferences convened by the American Historical Association and the Association for Asian Studies; addressed audiences at think tanks and nonprofits like the Council on Foreign Relations, Freedom House, and the Formosan Association for Public Affairs; and given talks at various U.S., Canadian, British, and Hong Kong institutions. I was a visiting scholar in 2017–18 at the University of Toronto’s Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library, which houses the most extensive, centralized overseas collection of primary and secondary source material on Hong Kong. Prior to that, I interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and edited the country’s oldest undergraduate history periodical, The Historian.

Beyond the ivory tower, I’ve been affiliated with the Hong Kong Democracy Council since its 2019 establishment, first as an advisor and now as a senior policy and research fellow. I served, too, on the standing committee of Demosistō, the defunct political party once at the forefront of youth progressive resistance in Hong Kong, where I’d been born and raised. When my hometown still enjoyed fair, open elections, I worked for two victorious Legislative Council campaigns, in 2016 and 2018. I was also one of the lead architects of “Decoding Hong Kong’s History,” a crowdfunded public-history venture from 2017 to 2020 that collected, digitized, and analyzed declassified files from archives around the globe.

Beginning with the unforgettable July 1 march in 2003 and continuing after I moved across the Pacific a decade later, I’ve actively protested against Chinese authoritarian expansionism, planning numerous rallies in the U.S. as a co-founder of NY4HK in 2014 and DC4HK in 2019. I’m interviewed often by the media as well as featured in two documentary films — Denise Ho: Becoming the Song (2020) and Hong Kong: Final Days of Freedom (2024) — and several podcasts. Protected by President Joe Biden’s Deferred Enforced Departure program since 2021, I’m a passionate advocate of bipartisan immigration reform to provide permanent humanitarian pathways for Hong Kongers and other persecuted communities.