Emily Yu Zong is an environmental humanities scholar, literary critic, and curator. She received her PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, where she previously taught gender studies and Australian literature. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University and the Associate Editor of Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press).

Emily’s research fields are the environmental humanities and ecocriticism, Asian diasporic literature and culture, migration and refugee studies, feminist STS, media and technology theory, multispecies storytelling, and the ocean and blue humanities. Her first book Planetarity from Below: Decolonial Ecopoetics of Migration and Diaspora (University of Michigan Press, 2026) rewrites modern narratives of freedom by theorising migration as an ecological process, which reconstitutes freedom from below as a contingent and unruly creativity shared with animals, waters, minerals, waste, and technology. Through analyses of migration eco-literature and eco-cinema across Australia, North America, and China, covering a range of migratory subjects – diasporic settlers, Indigenous peoples, refugees and asylum seekers, climate migrants, and migrant workers – the book introduces decolonial knowledges, imaginations, and praxes that explore how borderland subjectivities can open new possibilities for multispecies flourishing. This decolonial migrant ecopoetics materializes the planet as a pluralist method of worldmaking for enriching debates in ecocriticism, diaspora, migration and critical race studies, posthumanist ethics, and the planetary turn in the humanities.

She has published in journals such as ARIEL, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Australian Studies, Journal of Intercultural Studies, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, and JASAL, and in edited volumes including The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel (Cambridge University Press). With Jeffrey Santa Ana, she is coeditor of Decolonial Asian Diasporic Ecocriticism, a double special issue of ARIEL (2026, vol. 57, no. 3-4).

Emily has also directed and curated a number of eco-art projects, including the immersive virtual reality films Bovine Calling: A VR Story on Eco-Vulnerability in Hong Kong (2023) and Healing Atmospheres: A VR Film on Environments of Care in Hong Kong (2026), both in collaboration with the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit at the University of Hong Kong; and the waste-to-art project Waterborne: A Climate Art Exhibition (2022) and Thus, Soil (2024). She was Visiting a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University in 2026.

Her current research, supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, examines the decolonial blue humanities in ocean literature and media, and extends her work on migrant ecologies, including weather and heat imaginations among migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong in the context of climate adaptation.

Courses Taught:

HUMN3096: Posthuman Futures
HUMN2056: Climate Change Literature and Culture
HUMN2055: Environmental Humanities: Key Concepts
WRIT7020: Theory as Writing

Principal Investigator, “Water Imaginations and Aqueous Forms in Asian Australian Literature: Studying Migrant Perspectives for the Decolonial Blue Humanities”, General Research Fund (GRF), Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Project No. 12609525, HKD 315,000

Principal Investigator, “Towards Anti-Racist Nature: Asian Australian Environmental Literature and Art”, Early Career Scheme (ECS), Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Project No. 22614922, HKD 390,132

Principal Investigator, “Multispecies Storytelling: Towards More-than-Human Lifeworlds in Hong Kong”, HKBU Arts Faculty Research Impact Fund, RIF2103, HKD 50,000

Principal Investigator, “Cultural Imaginations of Invasive Species in Australia”, HKBU Start-up Grant, HKD 100,000

Principal Investigator, “Posthuman Perspectives in Asian Diasporic Literature”, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Project (International Recruitment Scheme), RMB 600,000

“Waterborne: A Climate Art Exhibition,” HKBU Centre for Innovative Service Learning Grant, HKD 40,500

Books/edited volumes:

Zong, Emily Yu. Planetarity from Below: Decolonial Ecopoetics of Migration and Diaspora. University of Michigan Press, January 2026. 

Zong, Emily Yu, and Jeffrey Santa Ana, editors. Decolonializing Asian Diasporic Ecocriticism (double special issue of ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 57, no. 3-4, 2026. Johns Hopkins University Press)

Peer-reviewed Articles:

Zong, Emily Yu. “Racial Geology and Alluvial Subjectivity in Chinese Australian Gold Rush Fiction.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. vol. 57, no. 3-4, 2026 (forthcoming)

Zong, Emily Yu. “From Empathetic Machine to Mimetic Sympoiesis: Reimagining Virtual Reality Toward Regenerative Media.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 21 Jan 2026. https://doi.org/10.1177/135485652614173 

Zong, Emily Yu, and Jeffery Santa Ana. “Decolonial Ecologies of Rememberance and Renewal in Asian Diasporic Literature.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 57, no. 3-4, 2026 (forthcoming)

Zong, Emily Yu, and Daisy Bisenieks. “Dark Humor and Invasive Species Storytelling in the Age of Extinction.” Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 49, no. 1, 2025, pp. 4-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2025.2452176

Zong, Emily Yu. “The Making of the Asian Australian Novel.” The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, edited by David Carter. Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 502-19. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090049.031

Zong, Emily Yu. “Towards an Ethics of Witnessing: Refugee Memory and Community in Gish Jen’s World and Town.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 64, no. 1, 2023, pp. 61-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2021.1891020

Zong, Emily Yu. “‘That ‘Willful’ Migrant Adulteress: Female Embodiment and Diasporic Melancholia in Chandani Lokugé’s Softly, As I Leave You.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 64, no. 3, 2023, pp. 453-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2022.2049192

Zong, Emily Yu. “Dragon Lovers and Plant Politics: Queering the Nonhuman in Hoa Pham’s Wave and Ellen Van Neerven’s ‘Water’.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 28, no. 3, 2021, pp. 1048-65. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa106

Zong, Emily Yu. “Anachronism in the Anthropocene: Plural Temporalities and the Art of Noticing in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 32, no. 4, 2021, pp. 305-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2021.1977568

Zong, Emily Yu. “The Voice of Diversity: Picture Brides and Masked Individuality in Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 57, no. 6, 2021, pp. 841-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2021.1964096

Zong, Emily Yu. “Post-apocalyptic Specters and Critical Planetarity in Merlinda Bobis’s Locust Girl.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 2020, pp. 99-123. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ariel/article/view/63035

Zong, Emily Yu. “Disturbance of the White Man: Oriental Quests and Alternative Heroines in Merlinda Bobis’s Fish-Hair Woman” JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, vol. 16, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1-17. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/11419

Zong, Emily Yu. “‘I Protest, Therefore I Am’: Cosmo-multiculturalism, Suburban Dreams, and Difference as Abjection in Hsu-Ming Teo’s Behind the Moon.” Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2016, pp. 234-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2016.1163535

Zong, Emily Yu. “Transnational Allegory, Domestic Cosmopolitanism: Towards a Cosmofeminine Space in Shirley Lim’s Joss and Gold.” New Scholar, vol. 4, no. 1, 2016, pp. 51-64. https://bit.ly/3wEdKX6

Zong, Emily Yu. “Rethinking Hybridity – Amputated Selves in Asian Diasporic Identity Formation.” Worldmaking: Literature, Language, Culture, edited by Tom Clark, Emily Finlay, and Philippa Kelly. John Benjamins, 2017, pp. 189-200.

Review and Interview Articles:

Zong, Emily Yu. “Emily Yu Zong Reviews Everything Changes: Australian Writers and China.” Mascara Literary Review, vol. 23. 26 Apr. 2020.

Zong, Emily Yu, and Anoushka Dowling. “Coronavirus Racism Tests the Limits of Multicultural Australia.” Griffith University MATE Program Forum, 6 July 2020.

Zong, Emily Yu. “Chinese SF Beyond Politics – An Interview with Hao Jingfang.” Mascara Literary Review, vol. 22. Jun 2018.

Zong, Emily Yu. “‘I Have to Recuperate Love, and Grow it Back’—An Interview with Merlinda Bobis.” Mascara Literary Review, vol. 18. 1 Oct. 2015.

Zong, Emily Yu. “A Plague of Love – A Review of Merlinda Bobis’s Locust Girl.” Australian Women’s Book Review, vol. 26, no. 1-2, 2014, pp. 26-29.

Zong, Emily Yu. “Recording and Remaking the Story of Mother—A Review of Lily Chan’s Toyo.” Australian Women’s Book Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 2013, pp. 23-25.

1. Co-director and co-producer, in collaboration with Dr Alex Gearin (HKU). Healing Atmospheres: A VR Film on Environments of Care in Hong Kong. 2026. (immersive VR film on sensorial worldmaking and disability justice. 29 Jan-5 Feb, 2026. Arts Tech and the eXtended Humanities Lab, The University of Hong Kong)

2. Co-director and co-producer, in collaboration with Dr Alex Gearin (HKU). Bovine Calling: A VR Story on Eco-vulnerability in Hong Kong. (An immersive virtual reality film and art exhibition on the entangled worlds of buffalos, cows, and humans as they navigate vulnerability and alterity in Hong Kong. 22-28 Sep, 2023. KMK Gallery, HKBU.)

3. Curator and participating artist. Waterborne水生: A Climate Art Exhibition. A Waste to Art Project. 17-21 Nov 2022. TriAngle Space, HKBU. Hong Kong. (Full publication here: Waterborne)

4. Co-curator and participating artist, in collaboration with soil artist David Sheil. Thus, Soil 故, 土 Art Exhibition. 03-19 April 2024. Au Shue Hung Memorial Library, HKBU. (Full publication here: Thus, Soil)