Dr Wing-Fai Leung

Prior to joining CMCI, Wing-Fai Leung taught and researched at University College Cork, Ireland; Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; and University of St Gallen, Switzerland. She was a visitor scholar at the Department of Comparative Literature, the University of Hong Kong (2019-2020) and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2020).

Fai’s research expertise includes the East Asian film and media industries, digital entrepreneurship, cultural and creative labour, politics of representation, and anti-East and Southeast Asian racism. She has served as an executive committee member of the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) since 2020. She is also on the editorial boards of Media Industry Studies; Creative Industries Journal; Communication, Culture and Critique; and Work Organization, Labour & Globalisation.

Fai’s publications include three monographs: Migration and Identity in British East and Southeast Asian Cinema (2023), Digital Entrepreneurship, Gender and Intersectionality: An East Asian Perspective (2018) and Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity (2014). Her research has also been published in peer-reviewed journals: Media, Culture & Society; International Journal of Cultural Studies; Information, Communication and Society; Asian Ethnicity; and Sociological Review. Fai has co-edited special issues for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas and New Technology, Work and Employment.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Creative industries in East Asia
• Cultural and creative labour
• Gender, race and intersectional discrimination
• Identities and cultural representation
• Creative activism. 

Fai chairs the Gender and Work in the Creative Industries research group. She welcomes PhD enquiries from candidates wishing to pursue projects in the above subject areas. 

For more details, please see her full  research profile.

Teaching

Wing-Fai Leung is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Fai contributes to a broad range of BA and MA modules. She teaches in the subject areas of media stardom, diversity and inclusion, cultural representations, global media production, gender and sexualities in East Asian media, and work and labour in the cultural and creative industries.

Expertise and public engagement

Fai has appeared in a range of media, including BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour and Monocle 24, and she has been interviewed as a subject expert and consultant by Reuters, NBC, Politiken and the Atlantic Magazine. In addition, she has written for Taiwan Insight, The Irish Times, Hong Kong Express (in Italian) and Asia Express (in Italian). 

Fai was also a member of the Media & Communications Working Group, Transforming Women’s Leadership Pathways that produced the What Will It Take: Equality in Leadership by 2030 report. 

She has given public lectures about East Asian films at the Arnolfini, Royal Asiatic Society, Cornerhouse, British Film Institute, National Media Museum, National Film Theatre, Glasgow Film Theatre, Museum of East Asian Art, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and Lighthouse Cinema (Dublin).

Selected publications 

Migration and Identity in British East and Southeast Asian Cinema (Routledge, 2023) 

Digital Entrepreneurship, Gender and Intersectionality: An East Asian Perspective (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018)

Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity (Routledge, 2014) 

Maria Paola Pofi and Leung Wing-Fai, ‘Responses to Health Risks and Suffering: ‘China’ in the Italian Media Discourses During the Early Stage of the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Media, Culture and Society (Oct, 2021) 

Leung Wing-Fai, Rosalind Gill & Keith Randle, ‘Getting In, Getting On, Getting Out? Women as Career Scramblers in the UK Film and Television Industries’, Sociological Review Monograph ‘Gender and Creative Labour’, 63:S1, 50-65 (2015)