Professor Dr. Siao Fong

Biography

Rong joined King's College London in 2024 after working at Lancaster University, the National University of Singapore, and Royal Holloway University of London. Her research explores the implications of media bifurcation and globalization within Southeast Asia's media industries in an age marked by competing global hegemonies. In particular, she is interested in how media workers navigate the 'two globalizations' to carve out spaces for creative insubordination and engagement, thus pluralizing the frameworks we use to conceptualize media work and labor. Rong is keen on supervising PhD projects in the areas of Asian media industries, production studies, authoritarianism in media, and the geopolitics of media production. At King's College London, she teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In 2024, she received the Faculty Award for Internationalization in Higher Education from Lancaster University, and in the year 2025, she was awarded the Department Award for Seminar Leader. Rong is developing a research leadership engagement profile that includes editorial roles in the European Journal of Cultural Studies and Routledge’s Encyclopedia of Screen Studies. She regularly publishes in public-facing outlets, and in 2023, she collaborated with the NGO New Naratif based in Malaysia to produce a report on media freedom in Southeast Asia.

Research Interests