Main Research Areas:
Chinese identity, homosexuality and masculinity
Biography:
Dr. Travis S.K. Kong is a leading sociologist of gender and sexuality with a specialization in Chinese identity, masculinity and sexuality. He is Associate Professor (2012-) and Programme Director of Media, Culture and Creative Cities (2013-) in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Kong is the co-editor of Sexualities, the leading journal on human sexualities which encourages multidisciplinary, theoretically driven, research-based qualitative approaches within a global framework. His publications represent original, innovative and outstanding contributions to international scholarship. To date, he is the author of Chinese Male Homosexualities: Memba, Tongzhi and Golden Boy (Routledge 2011; Chinese edition in 2018) and Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten (Hong Kong University Press 2019; Chinese edition in 2014), and has published numerous articles in such high-impact journals as British Journal of Sociology, Urban Studies, The Sociological Review, Men & Masculinities, British Journal of Criminology, Qualitative Research and The Lancet.
As an active public sociologist in Hong Kong, his participatory action research has had significant impact on the community. He is the founder of a self-help group for older (60+) gay men called Gay & Grey, which is the first and only non-profit non-governmental organisation looking after the well-being of older members of the LGBTQ community in Hong Kong. This project’s impact is evidenced by his receipt in 2015 of the Social Sciences Knowledge Exchange Award (https://youtu.be/JTAjZjtMYFA) from the University of Hong Kong. He also received the Prism Award from the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 2014 and the LGBT+ Advocacy Award from Community Business in 2020 in recognition of his long-term service to and research on the LGBTQ community. The multi-award-winning feature-length movie Suk Suk (dir. Ray Yeung, 2019) is based on his book on older gay men in Hong Kong.
Selected Works:
Kong, T.S.K. (2019) Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten. Hong Kong University Press.
Kong, T.S.K. (2019). ‘Transnational queer sociological analysis of sexual identity and civic-political activism in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China’, British Journal of Sociology 70 (5): 1904-1925.
Kong, T.S.K. (2018) ‘Gay & Grey: Participatory Action Research in Hong Kong’, Qualitative Research, 18(3): 257-272.
