Ka-kin Cheuk

Ka-Kin Cheuk is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese and History at the City University of Hong Kong. He previously held teaching and research positions at Universiteit Leiden, NYU Shanghai, and Rice University. Trained as an anthropologist, his research revolves around the study of migration, transnationalism, and inter-Asian connections, with transregional focuses on China, Hong Kong, India, the Middle East, and Europe as well as the US and the UK. His recent publications include “Transient Migrants at the Crossroads of China’s Global Future” (a special issue of Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration 3:1, 2019), “Funny Money Circulation and Fabric Exports from China to Dubai through Indian Trading Networks” (American Behavioral Scientist 66, 2022), “Diasporic Convergence, Sustained Transience and Indifferent Survival: Indian Traders in China” (History and Anthropology, 2022), “Teaching Ethnographic Research Methods in the Time of COVID-19: Virtual Fieldtrips, a Web Symposium, and Public Engagement with Asian American Communities in Houston, Texas” (Teaching and Learning Anthropology 4:1, 2021), and “Making Mumbai (in China)” (in Lisa Björkman, ed., Bombay Brokers, Duke University Press, 2021). At Rice University, he received three teaching grants, including an Inquiry-based Learning Teaching Grant and a Course Development Grant for developing new, alternative, and decolonizing teaching methods in Asian studies, Chinese studies, and anthropology. Having conducted fieldwork over the past decade on the Sikh diaspora in Hong Kong and on Indian traders in southeast China, he is currently developing a new project on the transnational flower industry and environmental ethics in China and Scotland.

Education

• DPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology (viva voce passed without correction) and The Swire Scholar at the St. Antony’s College with full scholarship, University of Oxford
• MPhil in Anthropology (by research), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Bachelor of Social Science in Anthropology (Honours, First Class), with concentration in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Previous Positions

• Annette and Hugh Gragg Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Asian Studies, Chao Center for Asian Studies and Department of Transnational Asian Studies, Rice University
• Postdoctoral Fellow of Global Interactions, Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University
• Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Asia, New York University Shanghai
• Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University
• Teaching and Research Assistant, The Chinese University of Hong Kong