Prof. LEUNG Shi-chi Daren 梁仕池
Assistant Professor
Location: Room 123, Ho Sin Hang Building 何善衡樓123室
Phone: (852) 2616 7497
Fax: (852) 2572 5170
Email: [email protected]
Areas of Interest: Urban Commons, Critical Food Studies, Waste Management, More-than-human Ethnography, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Youth Culture
Daren Shi-chi Leung is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. He also serves as a Core Centre Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies and sits on the Advisory Board of Lingnan’s Global Development and Sustainability Program. Trained in cultural studies, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Sydney in 2021; his doctoral thesis was shortlisted for the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Thesis Prize. Building on this recognition, he was elected Asia Regional Representative and nominated as Organizational Secretary on the board of the Association for Cultural Studies. He has also been invited to serve as an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University.
Leung’s research examines the cultural–material politics of waste, food, and sustainability across Asia and beyond, engaging technology, history, geography, ecology, and community. This agenda supports a diverse and collaborative research profile. He is Principal Investigator of the RGC Early Career Scheme (2022–2025), “Waste Commons,” which explores sustainable food-waste management in Hong Kong through policy design, community participation, and recycling technologies. He also leads an RGC General Research Fund project (2026–2027), “Returning Waste to the Field,” investigating human excrement, public health, hygiene technologies, environmental crisis, and circularity in contemporary rural China. In parallel, he is a co-investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (2025–2028), “The Legacy of Coastal Infrastructure,” a comparative study of reclamations and seawalls in Sydney, Hong Kong, and Tokyo with colleagues Denis Byrne, Gay Hawkins, and Lara Lamb.
Leung has published in leading venues across cultural studies, environmental humanities, and science and technology studies, including Cultural Studies, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, The Journal of Peasant Studies, and China Perspectives. He also works closely with NGOs and social enterprises to translate academic insights into public benefit, and his public-facing work has been covered by local Chinese- and English-language media.
Guided by feminist and decolonial pedagogies, Leung is collaborating with students and community partners to develop an experiential learning toolkit for environmental education and embodied response-ability, “Staying a Bit Closer with the Trouble.” He is the co-founder of 日日有餘 Day-Day-Waste-Wise (IG: @DDWW.HK).
PhD in Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
MPhil in Humanities, Hong Kong Baptist University
BA in Cultural Studies, Lingnan University
Monograph under preparation:
Excremental Modernity: Human Waste, Food and (Un-)Hygiene in China
Journal Articles:
2. Kavak S., Arango, L., …Leung, D. S. C.…Ngubane, M. (Under review). “Uneven capitalist development, migrant workers and food sovereignty”. Peasant Studies.
3. Leung, D. S. C. (accepted). “Composting (in) the STS Classroom: Learning to Stay with the Disgusting Other”. Science, Technology, & Human Values.
4. Leung, D. S. C. (2025). “A Care Continuum: Food Waste Challenge in Hong Kong and Its Narration in Action”. European Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494251356420
5. Li, D., Leung, D. S. C., & Probyn, E. (2025). “Wet Dream: EV culture” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2025.2532135
6. Leung, D. S. C. (2025). “Waste Commons in Motion”. Cultural Studies 39(3): 404-432. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2024.2442443.
7. Leung, D. S. C. (2024). “Shit in Our Time: An Unsettling Epoch of Metabolic Disturbance”. Lateral13(1). https://doi.org/10.25158/L13.1.15 [ranking and IF unavailable]
8. Aguiar, D., Ahmed, Y., Avcı, D., Bastos, G.,.… Leung, D. S. C…,Valencia-Duarte, D. M. (2023). “Transforming critical agrarian studies: Solidarity, scholar-activism and emancipatory agendas in and from the Global South”. Peasant Studies 50(2): 758-786. (co-author with Aguiar et al.) https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2023.2176759
9. Leung, D. S. C. (2021). “Convivial Agriculture: Evolving Food and Farming Activism in South China”. China Perspectives 2021(2): 29-38. https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.11674 (French version: “Agriculture conviviale: évolution du militantisme alimentaire et agricole en Chine du Sud”. Perspectives chinoises, 2021(2): 33-43)
10. Erni, J. & Leung, D. S. C. (2019). “The Dilemma of Mobility: On the Question of Youth Voluntourism in Times of Precarity”. Cultural Studies 33: 915-943. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2019.1660691
Book chapters:
2. Leung, D. S. C. (forthcoming 2025). “Experiential Learning with Waste”. An STS Teachbook. Lever Press.
3. Leung, D. S. C. (2022). “Reviving Community Agrarianism in Post-socialist China”. In Victoria Stead and Melinda Hinkson (eds), Beyond Global Food Supply Chains: Crisis, Disruption, Regeneration. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
4. Leung, D. S. C. (2017). “An Edible Speculation”. In K. Johnston and S. Pratt (eds), A speculative field guide to Blackwattle Bay. Sydney, NSW: The Sustainable Fish Lab, University of Sydney.
5. Leung, D. S. C. (2017). “Sugarcoated Racism: Managing Racialized Anxieties in Hong Kong Television Drama.” In John N. Erni (ed.) Feeling Ethnic: Visuality, Emotions, and Minority Culture. London: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53861-6_6
• “Beyond the Flush: Revisiting Human-Waste Relations in Reform-Era China”. (co-convener of the panel of Troubling Asia: The Politics of Ecological Configuration of Wastefulness and Wastelessness). The 2025 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Conference, Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand: 23-25 July 2025
• “A Radical Contextualisation of Food Waste from Hong Kong: Historicity, Coloniality, and Materiality of Commons”. The 2025 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Conference, Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand: 23-25 July 2025
• “Staying with the Metabolic Troubles: The Human-Waste Relationship in the Chinese Context”. Health, Environment and Anthropology. Durham University Durham:23-24 April 2025
• “Exploring the Food-Waste-Politics Nexus in Urban Farming”. The 13th International Convention of Asia Scholars, Surabaya, Indonesia: 28 July- 1 August 2024.
• “Staying with the Trouble of Feces: Metabolic Disturbance in the Chinese Context”. A Gathered Dialogue: Eco-afterlives and Slow Hope, Hong Kong Education University: 13-4 May 2024.
• “Performing the materiality of food waste in the arts of transience”. Performing Care and Carelessness Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin: 14-16 February 2024
• ‘I Have Never Experienced Food Waste in This Way’: A New Approach to Community Engagement and Caring Techniques’. Hong Kong 2023 Humanities Conference on Comparative Cultures of Care, Hong Kong Education University: 5-6 November 2023.
• “Rethinking Hygiene and Environmental Problems”. Association for Cultural Studies Summer Institute—De-colonization in the 21st Century: Aug 2023.
• ‘‘The Commoning of Food Waste in Post-colonial Hong Kong”. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference: Ahmedabad, India, July 2023.
• “Mao’s Toilet: The Politics of Feeding the People in Socialist China (the 1950s-70s)”. Sci-Tech Asia Webinar, June 2023.
• “The Rise of the Commons Movement in Hong Kong”. Village Commoning Symposium, University of Hong Kong: May 2023.
• “Waste Commons: A case for applied cultural studies”. Doing Cultural Studies in Hong Kong Symposium. Centre for Cultural Studies, CUHK, Hong Kong, Dec 2022.
• Academic collaborator, St. James’ Settlement on their Women Future-makers Employment Program (Sep 2024-ongoing)
• Academic collaborator, TWGHs東華三院on Eco-Village (2023-ongoing)
• Guest speaker, “Exploring Organic Farming – Conventional Wisdom and Modern Agriculture”. CUHK: SDG Forum Series 2023/24, 9 May 2024.
• Guest Host, 文化研宇宙(Digital Culture), RTHK, Sep 2023-Feb 2024
• TV commentary on the overtime work policy in Hong Kong, TVB News Magazine (新聞透視): 23 March 2024.
• Academic consultant, When a Poo Woos, a dance theatre in the International Arts Carnival 2023, City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC). 11-13/8/2023.
• Newspaper article,回應最低工資委員會主席王沛詩—最低工資覆蓋率低 非社會之福Low coverage of minimum wage is not a blessing to the society. Ming Pao Daily News, 17/01/2023.