All Affiliates
Dr Jiaying Sim
Assistant Lecturer

Dr Jiaying Sim

BA, MA (Nanyang Technological University); PhD (University of Glasgow)

Contact Information

Phone

3917-5147

Email

simjy@hku.hk

Location

Room 846, 8/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

Profile

Dr Sim Jiaying received her PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Glasgow in 2018 and her MA in English Literature from Nanyang Technological University in 2013. Her research and creative practice explore expanded cinema, decolonial aesthetics, and multisensory storytelling at the intersections of art, ecology, and technology. Working across film curation, immersive media, and arts education, her teaching and research interests include Southeast Asian cinema, transnational screen cultures, and creative-critical methodologies that bridge theory and practice.

Dr Sim is also the founder of Singapore Film Database (SGFilmDB), a digital resource documenting Singapore’s film ecosystem through information, images, posters, and critical information on local productions, funding opportunities and exhibition spaces. She has served as a film programmer for the 35th (2024) and 36th (2025) Singapore International Film Festival. In 2025, she was selected as one of two global fellows for the Hyundai Artlab Editorial Fellowship, producing a series of commissioned essays on contemporary art in Southeast Asia.

Prior to joining HKU, she taught at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore University of Social Sciences, and DigiPen Singapore @ Singapore Institute of Technology, where she designed interdisciplinary modules on storytelling, media, and cultural theory. Her academic writings have appeared in Film-Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Film Studies, Screen Ethics and Global Politics (Edinburgh University Press), and the Handbook of Queer Southeast Asia (Routledge). More at simjiaying.com

Research Expertise

Expanded cinema and immersive media

Film programming and curation as pedagogy

Decolonial aesthetics and sensory epistemologies

Singapore film history, archives and digital humanities

Transnational and Southeast Asian screen cultures

Assemblage and affect theory

Courses 

ENGL2190 Special topics in 19th-century literature 

ENGL7108 Imagining Asia

ENGL7994A Capstone experience: Final research project

PUBLICATIONS

Art Essays

Sim, Jiaying. (2025) “To See a Tembusu Tree: Yanyun Chen’s Veins, Grains, and Striae”,  Hyundai Editorial Artlab. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2025) “Softness as Method: Charmaine Poh’s Cinematic Language for  Queer Parenthood in Singapore”, Hyundai Editorial Artlab. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2024) “Where do these roads lead? Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice”,  Jom. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2025) “Fragile Loops: Failure as Possibility in Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen’s Expanded Cinema”, Hyundai Editorial Artlab : Read here.

Book Chapters

Sim, Jiaying. (2023) “Don’t look away: Production-assemblages of rape culture in Midi Z’s Nina Wu” in Screen Ethics and Global Politics, Edinburgh UP. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2022) “Shirkers: Lost and Found? – Tracing Transsensorial Trauma in a

True Crime Road Movie”. In Transnational Crime Cinema, Edinburgh UP. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2022) “Viddsee: Queer Affective Assemblages of Short Film Circulation, Distribution and Reception in Singapore”. In Handbook of Queer Southeast Asia,  Routledge. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2023) “Affective assemblages of material culture: Qi Pao, Mahjong and performance in Ang Lee’s lust, caution,” Film-Philosophy, 27(1), pp. 29–49. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2016) “The Embodiment of Eros: Making Sense of Wong Kar-wai’s ‘The Hand”. Transnational Chinese Cinema: Corporeality, Desire, and Ethics. Available here: [LINK]

Journal Articles

Sim, Jiaying. (2021) “Queering bodies: ‘becoming-unrecognisable’ in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together,” Journal of Chinese Film Studies, 1(2), pp. 415–434. Available here: [LNK]

Sim, Jiaying. (2020) “A land imagined: Transsensorial states of transmigration,” The Center for Asia and Diaspora, 10(1), pp. 37–67. Available here: [LINK].

Sim, Jiaying. “Embodiment, Curation, Exhibition: Report on Douglas Gordon’s Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now. (Television, Video, Installation)” Screen Bodies, Vol 1.1 (2015). Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. “An Olfactory Cinema: Smelling Perfume” ACTA UNIV. SAPIENTIAE, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, 8 (2014), 113–127. Available here: [LINK]

Reviews

Sim, Jiaying. “Book Review: Negative Geographies Exploring the Politics of Limits.” Sage Journals: Cultural Geographies, 2022, 29.1: 159-168. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. “ Terence Chong, The State and the Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions.” SARE:Southeast Asian Review of English [Online], 56.2 (2019): 141-143. Available here: [LINK]

Sim, Jiaying. ‘An Omnivorous Family’s Dilemma: A Humanist Reflection of Meat Consumption and Production Culture’ Asian Film Archive. 10 Jan. 2017. Available here: [LINK]

Creative Works/research

Singapore Film Database [LINK]

  • A digital resource of information, images, posters, film synopsis, and critical analyses, on Singapore feature and short films, actors, production crew personnel.

Imagine the Fire (Experimental Short Film, 2022, Producer)

Batas Langit (Animated Short, 2022, Producer)

We Carry On (Narrative Short Film, MCCY Harmony Fund, 2022, Producer)

GRANTS AND AWARDS

Hyundai Artlab Editorial Fellowship (2025)
Selected as 1 of 2 fellows globally from over 600 applicants to produce a series of essays on contemporary art.

Principal’s Early Career Mobility Fund, University of Glasgow (2015)
Competitive university-wide award supporting a research residency at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Film Archive.

Research Support Awards, University of Glasgow (2015–2016)
Merit-based funding for doctoral research and conference participation in Seoul and Deleuze Studies.

Collaborative Research Award, University of Glasgow (2015)
Granted for co-organising the Affect in Asian Cinemas conference between the University of Glasgow and The University of Hong Kong .

Research Scholarship, Nanyang Technological University (2011–2013)