Panel 1: international Cultural Relations and Exchange – East Asia Perspectives
Biyun Zhu is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Cultural Policy and Governance at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on comparative cultural policy, cultural diplomacy, and soft power. She has received multiple grants from international funders, including the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She has published in world-leading journals across disciplines such as cultural studies, diplomacy, and political science. She is editing two issues on cultural diplomacy for leading journals in the field. Professionally, as a Chinese-born scholar with advanced degrees from the UK and the US, she has collaborated with government and non-governmental agencies across all three countries, as well as with international bodies including UNESCO and cultural diplomacy institutions in Europe. These experiences have provided her with first-hand insights into the regional and global dynamics of cultural diplomacy and soft power, from both empirical and theoretical perspectives.
Meggy Cheng received a Master of Arts in Cultural Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Dean’s List Honour), a Bachelor of Arts Degree at The University of Hong Kong and a Diploma in Drama at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Aspiring to integrate business entrepreneurship with arts management practices, Cheng has held diverse positions such as the Head of Marketing in Chung Ying Theatre, Director of Marketing and Communications for Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and Head of Branding and Marketing at M+, West Kowloon Cultural District. Cheng’s awards include the Scholarship for “Clore Leadership Programme 2018/19”, “Marketer of the Year 2019” at the HKMA/TVB Awards for Marketing Excellence 2019, “Gold Award” at HKMA/ViuTV & Now TV Awards for Marketing Excellence 2023 and the Effie Hong Kong 2024. Cheng is currently a member of the Radio Television Hong Kong Board of Advisors, Shatin Arts and Culture Promotion Committee, and Caritas Hong Kong Community Care Service Advisory Board.
Odgerel Odonchimed’s career in the arts began as a volunteer at the Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM) in 2002, before becoming a full time staff, first, as their Fundraising coordinator, followed by positions as Arts Education Program Director, Development Program Director, and Deputy Executive Director for Development. Since 2016 she has been the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Mongolia. Through her work at ACM, Odgerel has deepened her knowledge of both traditional and contemporary arts, and forged strong connections with leaders in business, government, civil society and the philanthropic sector both within Mongolia and internationally, helping her to lead the development of a new culture of philanthropy in Mongolia. She was a member of the Working group of Law on Culture, Ministry of Education, Culture, Science & Sport, 2016-2017, and has been a board member of several arts organisations in Mongolia.
Alexandra A. Seno is Director of Asian Cultural Council Hong Kong (ACC Hong Kong). An arts administrator with over a decade of experience in operational roles, she joined ACC Hong Kong in the autumn of 2023. She looks after general management, organization strategy, and grant-making for Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China. Alex has also served on the executive committee of The Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, as a board member of Para Site Art Space, and counselled Spring Workshop, an arts non-profit in Hong Kong. She is an advisory council member of the International Center of Photography in New York, and a new kunsthalle for contemporary art due to open in Manila in 2027. Alex produced two documentary films on contemporary Chinese literature from Hong Kong, with renowned Chinese director Ann Hui On Wah, the first one nominated for a 2024 Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary.
Panel 2: “Cultural Governance: Commoning Institutions, Infrastructure and Public Engagement”
Diego Maranan is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, designer, and researcher whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, technology, ecology, and future imaginaries. His creative practice bridges digital media, biological systems, and somatic experience, often through installations, wearables, and participatory experiments that foreground human and more-than-human relationships. He is currently Professor at the Faculty of Information and Communication Studies of the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU), and is also Deputy Director for Research at the UP Intelligent Systems Center, where he drives support for research initiatives in artificial intelligence, data science, complex systems, and human-centered technologies for socioeconomic good. In this capacity, Diego advocates for the national engagement by the arts and humanities with science, technology, and complex systems. His work has been exhibited internationally, and he is a co-founder of SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design), a global artscience collective engaged in creative prototyping of the future, and of Curiosity, a Philippine-based design research consultancy.
Dwinita (Tita) Larasati studied industrial product design at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Design Academy Eindhoven, and Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. She is the Focal Point of Bandung City of Design, UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN); co-founder and Executive Committee of Indonesia Creative Cities Network (ICCN); and Research Fellow at the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC). She is a Climate Leader at The Climate Reality Project (TCRP) Indonesia; a member of the Global Creative Economy Council (GCEC) and honorary member of the Indonesian Young Academy of Science (ALMI). During her terms as an expert fellow and advisor for the governments, she has been involved in the formulation of policy recommendations on cultural and creative economy, at the local, national and global levels. She currently works as a lecturer/researcher at ITB, and in her spare time she creates and publishes graphic diaries.
Melody Yiu is an urban researcher-designer with a focus on public architecture and cultural practices, currently a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Building upon international experience in urban design practice from London to Shanghai, she integrates this professional insight with her interest in arts and culture to pursue research on urban cultural development and artistic collaborations in spatial design. Following the recently published monograph, “Cultural Architecture and Late-colonial Space,” which accounts for the spatial history of public cultural architecture in Hong Kong, her current research investigates the topic of cultural infrastructure and its agency in the cultural development of Asian cities.
Zikri Rahman has consistently embarked on collaborations with diverse arts, cultural and activist groups in various socio-political projects. Currently, Zikri is the Program Coordinator for Pusat Sejarah Rakyat, an independent archival research and documentation focusing on Malaysia and Singapore’s people’s history. Through Buku Jalanan; a rhizomatic network of street library movement he co-founded in the year 2011, it focuses on decentralizing and democratising the modes of knowledge and cultural production. With LiteraCity, he initiated Kuala Lumpur’s literary and cultural mapping project. Zikri is also a writer, translator, independent researcher and curator with an MA in Social Research and Cultural Studies from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. Through multiple projects and selected publications, he dwells into oral history of Malaysia’s protest movements, critical pedagogy, art and cultural movement / intervention, regional based censorship documentation to the networks of theater practitioners in the inter-Asian context. His works can be accessed on: zikrirahman.xyz
Panel 3: Critical Pedagogies in Digital Art and Culture: How do we teach the use of technology in the humanities?
Benjamin Bacon is an Associate Professor of Media & Arts and the Major Convener of the Computation & Design program at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). He is the co-founder of the Design, Technology, and Radical Media Lab (DTRM); a fellow at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media; and the co-organizer of the Art, Media, and Cybernetics (AMC) working group at the American Society of Cybernetics (ASC). His practice centres around explorations into computation, its qualities and characteristics as a creative medium, and its changing relationship with society and industry perception. His creations have taken the form of mechanical sculptures, machine-learning neural networks, networked systems, experimental interfaces, body-hacking, and sound. His methodology as an artist is fundamentally rooted in the design research process, experimental in its essence, often reliant on direct interaction with materials. His conceptual approach is at times playful, at times critical, at times commentary, and at times speculative.
Chou Tung-Yen (周東彥) is an artist and director working across theatre, film, and immersive technology. He is the founder of Very Theatre, with projects ranging from documentary cinema to XR performance, presented at Venice Immersive, the Cannes Film Festival’s Immersive Competition, and Ars Electronica. His practice examines how technology reshapes storytelling, presence, spectatorship, and intimacy, fostering dialogue across artistic and cultural contexts.
Winnie Soon is a Hong Kong-born artist coder and researcher interested in the cultural implications of digital infrastructure that addresses wider power asymmetries with a particular interest in computational publishing, queering code and software. Their artistic and scholarly works engage with themes such as Free and Open Source Culture, Coding Otherwise, artistic/technical manuals, digital censorship and minor technology. Their works have appeared in museums, festivals, distributed networks, papers and alternative written forms, including co-authored books titled Boundary Images (2023), Fix My Code (2021), and Aesthetic Programming (2020). Artistically, Winnie’s awards include the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica (Artificial Intelligence and Life Art Category), and the 26th and 17th ifva awards (Special Mention and Silver Award). Currently, Winnie is an Associate Professor, Director of Art and Technology BA, and co-founder of the Slade Art+Tech Research Lab at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. More info: www.siusoon.net
Ziyang Wu (b.1990) is an artist and curator based in New York and Hangzhou. His recent practices examine how current technologies, in a cross-cultural context, affect politics, society, and the explicit and implicit relationships between things at both macro and micro levels. His video, AR, AI simulation and interactive video installation have been widely exhibited internationally. His recent fellowships and residencies include the shortlist of “Future Generation Art Prize” (2023-2024); “The Randall Chair” award at Alfred University (2022-2023); “Kai Wu” Interdisciplinary Studio residency, Media Art Lab, Times Museum (2021); AACYF Top 30 under 30 (2021); Residency Unlimited (2020); MacDowell Fellowship (2019); Artist-in-residence at Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) (2019); Winner of The ROCI Road to Peace by Robert Rauschenberg Art Foundation (2015). He is the department head of Open Media Department at School of Intermedia Art at China Academy of Art, adjunct professor at the BFA Fine Art Department at School of Visual Arts, and is a former member of NEW INC at the New Museum.
PANEL CONVENORS AND MODERATORS
Ashley Lee Wong, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Associate Director of the MA Cultural Management programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director, MetaObjects, a studio that facilitates digital projects with artists and cultural institutions. She initiated the collaborative research project Ecologies of Participation together with Yim Sui Fong (Fine Arts, CUHK) and Melody Hoi-Lam Yiu (Architecture, CUHK) in 2024. Her research bridges theory and practice to explore ways of thinking and engaging in contemporary cultural economies for artists and practitioners working at the intersections of art and technology. Her work has been published in academic journals including, Artnodes, 2025; DATA browser, 2025; Screened Bodies, The Journal of Embodiment, Media Arts, and Technology, 2022; and Visual Culture Studies Journal, 2022. She is the author of the monograph, Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies through Art and Technology (The MIT Press, 2025).
Audrey Wong is Programme Leader of the MA Arts and Cultural Leadership programme at LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore. An arts educator, cultural policy expert and civil society advocate, Audrey broke ground as the first Nominated Member of Parliament for the Arts in Singapore in 2009. Prior to joining LASALLE in 2010, Audrey was Artistic Co-director of The Substation, an independent arts centre where she worked across the visual arts, performing arts, and film. She has served on the boards of the Singapore Art Museum and Mandarin theatre company Nine Years Theatre. She was also formerly a Council member of the National Arts Council and sat on the Arts and Culture Strategic Review Committee (2010–2012). Her research interests include community leadership in the arts, Singapore cultural policy, traditional arts in Singapore, and arts management practices in Southeast Asia.
Benny Lim is Associate Professor of Practice in Cultural Management and Director of the Master of Arts in Cultural Management programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is also a member of the Programme Sub-committee of The TENG Company (Singapore) and the Advisory Board of the University Arts Centre, CUHK Shenzhen. In 2023, he was appointed by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council as an Advisor (Arts Administration) and Examiner (Drama). More recently, he was invited to select programmes for the Macao Fringe Festival 2025. Benny has produced and directed numerous theatre productions and arts festivals for close to 25 years, and as a performance maker, he has developed a substantial body of work exploring various dimensions of ‘performing the self’. In 2021, he initiated the ‘Art and Aging’ project and has since launched a series of drama workshops in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, as well as developed a Cantonese-language Arts Resource Hub for seniors.
Sunitha Janamohanan has worked in the arts since 1999 with a portfolio that covers a range of art forms and creative industries. She has been an arts manager, curator, producer, venue manager and heritage manager in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia. She has an MA in Arts Administration from Columbia University, New York, and since 2015 has been teaching arts management and cultural leadership at LASALLE College of the Arts, UAS. Sunitha’s research interests include community and socially engaged arts practice; local arts management models in Southeast Asia; and the intersections of social practice, labour, organisational behaviour and cultural leadership.
Venka Purushothaman is Deputy President and Provost at LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore, and founder of the Asia-Pacific Network for Culture, Education and Research (ANCER). He is an award-winning art writer with a distinguished career in the arts and creative industries in Singapore. He speaks internationally on transformative art and design education and works to enable the development of cultural leaders in Southeast Asia. He is widely published and sits on various international cultural and editorial boards. Venka holds a PhD in Cultural Policy and Asian Cultural Studies from the University of Melbourne. He is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art, (France), Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (UK), University Fellow, Musashino Art University (Japan) and member of the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Germany).
Pang Laikwan is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Cultural Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has authored several books, including, most recently, One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty (2024), The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement ( 2020), and The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution ( 2017). She was a CASBS Fellow (2021-2022) at Stanford University, and she is currently a Senior Research Fellow (2025-2030) of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council.
Jonathan Gander is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Creative Industries at Lasalle College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore. Jonathan holds a degree in Politics, an MBA and a PhD in Creative Industries from King’s College London. His specialism is strategy and innovation in the creative industries. He has published work on strategising and communication, sustainable and digital business models, competitive advantage, alliance management and entrepreneurship. He has just finished writing the second edition of his textbook, Strategic Management in the Creative and Cultural Industries, published by Routledge as part of the Mastering Management in the Creative and Cultural Industries series. His current research focus is on the institutionalisation of the art market.
Woo Yen Yen leads the MA Arts Pedagogy and Practice Programme at LASALLE College of the Arts. Her research and teaching integrate creative practice, public pedagogy, and cultural studies. An award-winning filmmaker, her works have been distributed on Netflix and HBO. She is also the Founder and creator of the Dim Sum Warriors app and comics series. Yen Yen earned her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, and previously held an Associate Professorship at Long Island University in New York, as well as a Visiting Professorship at Taiwan’s National Central University. You are invited to listen to her latest work, a docu-dramedy food podcast, Eat by Ear and follow her on IG @wooyenyen.