A specialist in the Pacific World, I have broad research and teaching interests that span 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 opens the China and Inner Asia section in the November 2024 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies. The courses I offer are Sino-American Relations Since 1776; China II: From Empire to Nation(s); and The Makings of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

I hold a B.A. in History & Journalism (2016) and an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought (2017) from New York University — the violet school that bestowed on Taylor Swift her honorary doctorate of fine arts! My senior honors thesis, “Music Below the Lion Rock,” examines how the evolution of transnational Cantopop reflected almost half a century 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 — in the Cold War’s shadow. These are stories I return to a lot, not just as an evolving intellectual but someone whose own itinerant life has been fashioned by them.

I’ve presented at flagship conferences convened by the American Historical Association and the Association for Asian Studies; addressed audiences at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, the Halifax International Security Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, and elsewhere; and spoken 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 boasts the most extensive 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 periodical in the field, The Historian.

Beyond the ivory tower, I’ve been affiliated with the Hong Kong Democracy Council since its 2019 inception, 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. Back when my hometown enjoyed at least partially fair 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 initiative between 2017 and 2020 that collected, digitized, and analyzed declassified files from archives in England and 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 protested against Chinese authoritarian expansionism, organizing frequent cross-movement rallies as a co-founder of NY4HK in 2014 and DC4HK in 2019. I’m interviewed often by the media as well as featured in several films — including the biographical documentary of my idol, Denise Ho: Becoming the Song (2020) — and podcasts. A beneficiary currently of the British National (Overseas) visa scheme and previously of President Joe Biden’s Deferred Enforced Departure program from 2021 to 2025, I remain a champion of comprehensive immigration reform to provide humanitarian pathways for communities facing persecution, conflict, and statelessness everywhere.

Legacies of the past linger like a timeless tune drifting through the eras: catchy hooks, echoes, rhymes, refrains, cathartic bridges, unresolved chords. I believe history shouldn’t only be archived but activated by those who take up the moral responsibility to bend its arc toward justice. For me, that calling discovered a voice on the breezy San Francisco summer afternoon in 2018 I met the late civil-rights icon John Lewis; his encouragement still inspires my journey at the nexus of education, policymaking, and activism to this day. The convictions and memories I carry with me whenever I’m on the move — riding the Jubilee line or sipping a latte as Speak Now plays softly at the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse — ready me for the next adventure yet to unfold.