Rong joined King's College London in 2024, having previously held positions at Lancaster University, the National University of Singapore, and Royal Holloway, University of London. Before entering academia, she worked as a television producer in Singapore and spent seven years in theatre production.

Her research sits at the intersections of Media and Cultural Studies, Production Studies, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. She examines global digital media industries, creative labour, illiberal media systems, inter-Asian production geopolitics, and the media industries of small nations. Her first book, Performing Fear in Television Production: Practices of an Illiberal Democracy (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), explores authoritarian media production through a production ethnography of Singaporean television. The book encourages readers to rethink contemporary media governmentality in conversation with global trends towards anti-fandom, public policing and surveillance culture, exploring how ‘post-public’ social imaginaries emerging among state and media practices may be remaking the terms of authoritarian media production. This forms part of her broader research interests in de-westernizing approaches to studying censorship and media freedom.

Rong's current research investigates the implications of competing forms of media globalisation for Southeast Asia's media industries and the ways media workers navigate these shifting geopolitical landscapes. Methodologically, she focuses on ethnographic approaches to studying everyday media practices in East and Southeast Asia. Across her work, she is committed to theorising from the margins and advancing inter-Asian conversations within media studies.

In 2026, Rong co-founded the Asian Media Industries Research Network with Dr Pei Sze Chow, a collaborative initiative between King's College London and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The network aims to foster reserach dialogue and collaboration around Asian media industries and media work. Further information is available at: https://mediaindustries.asia/

Rong is currently Co-Editor for Cultural Commons and Book Reviews at the European Journal of Cultural Studies and serves as an Editorial Advisor for Routledge Resources Online.

Personal website: https://www.siaoyuongfong.com/

Research interests and PhD supervision

Rong is interested in supervising PhD projects on:

• East and Southeast Asian media industries
• Production Studies
• Authoritarianism and censorship in media
• Production geopolitics
• Television and digital media practices

Teaching

Rong teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate levels at King's. In 2024, she was awarded a Faculty award for Internationalisation in Higher Education at Lancaster University. In her first year at CMCI, she was awarded a department award for Seminar Leader of the Year 2025.

Expertise and public engagement

Rong's developing research leadership and engagement profile includes being Co-Editor for Cultural Commons and Book Reviews at the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Editorial Advisor for Routledge Resources Online, and co-founder of the Asian Media Industries Research Network (mediaindustries.asia). She publishes regularly in public-facing outlets and in 2023, she worked with New Naratif, an NGO based in Oxford and Malaysia to produce a report on Media Freedom in Southeast Asia.

Selected publications

• Fong, S. Y., 2026. Imagining audiences in the age of generative AI. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13675494261468646
• Fong, S. Y., 2026. Representing Southeast Asia in Sino-Singaporean Television: The geopolitics of coproducing place in transnational media production. In P. Macdonald & A. Spicer, eds. Media Industries and Cities. Routledge. p. 229-245.
• Fong, S. Y., & Lim, T., 2025. Regional partnerships and media policy in the age of China’s rise: the case of Singapore-China film co-productions. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 31(2), 178–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2024.2333860
• Fong, S. Y., 2024. ‘They don’t need us’: Affective precarity and critique in transnational media work from the margins of ‘Cultural China’. Media, Culture & Society, 46(7), 1327-1343. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221140478
• Fong, S. Y., 2022. Performing Fear in Television Production: Practices of an illiberal democracy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Fong, S. Y., 2022. Drama production and audiences as ‘affective superaddressee’ in an illiberal democracy. In European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25:4, 1066-1082.