Dr. Jindong Leo-Liu
Director and Associated Expert
Jindong Leo-Liu (Publication name: Jindong Leo-Liu; Legal name: Jindong Liu 刘锦东/劉錦東) is an assistant professor in the New Media and Social Media Domain, at the Academy for Educational Development and Innovation (AEDI), the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). His research and teaching interests include human-machine communication, critical and cultural studies, mediated intimacy, AI companions, VR/AR/Metaverse, and Asian pop culture. He loves science fiction, animations and comics, Christopher Nolan’s films, and Hans Zimmer’s music. His academic journey started under the influence of Blade Runner2049, Her, Ghost in the Shell, and PsychoPass when he watched them with his genius roommate Yoshi in rainy London, 2018.
- PhD in Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- MPhil in Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- BA in Digital Culture, King’s College London
Why use “Leo-Liu” for his publication name?
It’s an experimental attempt under the Western-centric academic referencing system, such as APA, MLA, and Harvard, which prioritizes authors’ surnames to function as academic identification. Nevertheless, compared to Western surnames, Surnames in China and certain Asian countries (e.g., Korea) may encounter the problems of repetition due to the population size under the same surnames. For example, you may often meet many “Zhang”, “Wang”, “Li”, “Liu”, “Kim” in academic publications (much more frequent than “Smith”) but could not identify them without knowing their full names. Thus, inspired by Dr. Wu-Ouyang and Dr. Jones-Jang, I try to establish a different and more identifiable publication name for English academic publications. But why do I use “Leo”? Some people may suggest that Chinese people should have used their own Chinese names. Some Western people even felt weird about why many Chinese and certain Asians tend to have a separate English name (some may mock “fake English names”). I have different opinions: I endorse the use of multiple names, and believe it’s a justified attempt to localize oneself to respect different cultures. For example, many Western scholars have their unique Chinese names (e.g., my friend Prof Jeroen de Kloet uses his Chinese name “Prof Gao Weiyun 高伟云” in China).
Mediatized Alternative Futures Academic Network 