Queer Asia as method is built upon the larger discourse of Asia as method. This special issue brings together academics and practitioners reflecting on diversifying and decolonising our epistemes and methods of knowledge production. Emerging from a roundtable in 2020, contributors reflect on the questions of research, method, and pedagogy and reframing these within Asian practices and lived experiences as its technology of recognition.
Join us for a conversation launching the special issue on Queer Asia as Method, published in Media, Culture and Society, on 7 May 2026 at 1pm in Bush House (SE) 1.05 or Microsoft Teams. The contributors and editors share collaborative thinking about the questions raised by examining ‘Queer Asia as Method’ and the praxis informing the work of decentring and decolonising the globalised formation of queerness.
This event is supported by the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries and Queer@King’s at King’s College London.
Guests are welcome to join us in-person for this event, or join online using this Microsoft Teams link.
Speaker bios:
Liang Ge (they/them) is a Lecturer of Digital Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester. Liang’s work lies in the intersection of intimacy, digital media and technologies, digital methods, gender, sexuality, youth and East and Southeast Asian popular cultures and creative industries. Their research appears in journals including Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Media, Culture & Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Continuum and Convergence, among others.
J. Daniel Luther (they/them) is an independent researcher working on the intersections of queerness, South Asian public culture, gender, and sexuality. They recently co-edited a special issue Queer Asia as Method (2025) and are the author of Queering Normativity and South Asian Public Culture: Wrong Readings Only (2023). They serve as the Associate Programme Director at the Rhodes Trust, University of Oxford. Since 2016 they have served a global community of artists, activists, and academics as the co-founder of ‘Queer’ Asia. They are the co-editor of Queer Asia: Decolonising and Reimagining Sexuality and Gender (2019). Their research on queer theory, gender, culture, and media has been published in journals including South Asian Popular Culture, Kohl a Journal for Body and Gender Research amongst others. They also work as an Associate Consultant with Delta, a leadership consultancy, and serve on the advisory board of the UK Asian Film Festival.
Eva Cheuk‑Yin Li (she/they/keoi) is Lecturer in Screen Industries in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Eva’s research brings together queer media studies, fandom studies and gender/sexuality studies, with a focus on East and Southeast Asia. Her current research examines the circulation of sapphic media, particularly Thai Girls’ Love television, with attention to its global reach and reception. Her work has appeared in Media, Culture & Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Sexualities, Feminist Media Studies and Feminist Review, among others.
Ian Liujia Tian (he/him; PhD, University of Toronto) is an Assistant Professor of Global Queer Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. As a feminist activist ethnographer, he has published in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, QED, Journal of Canadian Studies, Space and Society, and Sexualities, as well as activist magazines such as Social Text Online and Upping the Anti.
Kaustav Bakshi (he/they) is Associate Professor, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. A Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow, his doctoral thesis, written with partial funding from the Trust, is entitled ‘Family, Sexualities and Ageing in Sri Lankan Expatriate Fiction: Kinship, Power Relations and the State’. An activist for gender rights, he is a member of the editorial advisory board of Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture (Intellect Bks.), and an occasional contributor to InPlainspeak, the digital magazine of TARSHI (Talking About Reproductive and Sexuality Health in India).
Hendri Yulius Wijaya (he/him) is the author of Intimate Assemblages: The Politics of Queer Identities and Sexualities in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). His writings on queer studies, gender, sexuality, and cultural politics have been published in academic journals, such as Laws and Indonesia and the Malay World (forthcoming), and popular media outlets, such as The Jakarta Post, New Mandala, Indonesia at Melbourne, Social Text Online, Esquire Indonesia, and DNA Australia, among others. He is coeditor of Queer Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2022). He holds a Master degree in Public Policy from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore and a Master degree in Gender and Cultural Studies (Research) from Sydney University.