Rong joined King's College London in 2024 and prior to that, worked at Lancaster University, National University of Singapore and Royal Holloway University of London.

Her research is situated at the intersections of Media and Cultural Studies, Production Studies and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Her first book, Performing Fear in Television Production: Practices of an Illiberal democracy, published by Amsterdam University Press in 2022 is on authoritarian resilience in the media. Based on a production ethnography of Singaporean television, it raises questions about how far the audience has become a surrogate for but also exceed the illiberal state in the ‘post-public sphere’. The book encourages readers to rethink contemporary media governmentality in conversation with global trends towards anti-fandom, public policing and surveillance culture, exploring how ‘post-public’ social imaginaries emerging among state and media practices may be remaking the terms of authoritarian media production. This forms part of her broader research interests in de-westernizing approaches to studying censorship and media freedom.

The new research Rong is developing explores the implications of the bifurcation of media globalisation for Southeast Asia's media industries in the age of competing global hegemonies. In particular, she is interested in how media workers liminal to the ‘two globalisations’ carve out spaces for creative insubordination and engagement, and how these pluralize the frameworks we use to think about media work and labour.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

Rong is interested in supervising PhD projects on:

• Asian media industries
• Production Studies
• Authoritarianism in media
• Production geopolitics
• Television and digital media practices

Teaching

Rong teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate levels at King's. In 2024, she was awarded a Faculty award for Internationalisation in Higher Education at Lancaster University.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Rong's developing research leadership and engagement profile includes editorial roles in the European Journal of Cultural Studies and Routledge’s encyclopedia for screen studies. She publishes regularly in public-facing outlets and in 2023, she worked with New Naratif, an NGO based in Oxford and Malaysia to produce a report on Media Freedom in Southeast Asia.

Selected Publications

• Fong, S. Y., 2022. Performing Fear in Television Production: Practices of an illiberal democracy. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Fong, S. Y., & Lim, T., 2024. Regional Partnerships and Media Policy in the Age of China’s Rise: The case of Singapore-China Film Co-productions. In International Journal of Cultural Policy. (Online First)
• Fong, S. Y., 2023. Transnational Media Production from the Margins of ‘Cultural China’: The Case of Singapore’s Media Producers. In Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 24:5, 744-760.
• Fong, S. Y., 2022. ‘They don’t need us’: Affective Precarity and critique in transnational media work from the margins of ‘Cultural China’. In Media, Culture & Society. (Online First)
• Fong, S. Y., 2022. Drama production and audiences as ‘affective superaddressee’ in an illiberal democracy. In European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25:4, 1066-1082.
• Fong, S. Y., 2018. Rethinking Censorship – A case study of Singaporean media. In Javnost - The Public, 25:4, 410-425.