Ang Peng Hwa is Professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is President-Elect of the International Communication Association, the first Asian to be so elected and will be President of the ICA after June 2016. His research interests lie in media law and policy and he has consulted on the subject for the governments of Singapore, Thailand and Bhutan.

A lawyer by training, he worked as a journalist before going on to pursue a Master’s in communication management at the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. in the mass media at Michigan State University.

In 2000, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship at Harvard University; in 2001, he was a visiting scholar at Oxford University. Ang recently stepped down as chairman of the regional non-profit media organisation Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and is one of the two vice-presidents of the Consumers’ Association of Singapore (CASE), and legal advisor to the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS).

Professor Craig teaches graduate courses in global and national, digital and social media industries, management, and practice in the Communication Management Masters program. His core courses include Global Hollywood (CMGT 559), Visual Storytelling (CMGT 552), Entertainment Industries (CMGT 586), and Social Media Entertainment (CMGT 529), amongst others. He is also a Visiting Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries, where he teaches courses in global Hollywood and conducts research about Chinese media industries. He is also a Fellow in the Peabody Media Center, part of the Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia.

Along with his collaborator, Professor Stuart Cunningham, Craig has researched, named and framed the dimensions and accelerated rise of the social media entertainment (global) and wanghong (Chinese) industries. Whether referred to as creators, influencers, YouTubers, vloggers, livestreamers, gameplayers, micro-celebrities, wanghong, zhubo or KOLs, these industries are distinguished by how social media entrepreneurs harness the features and affordances of social media platforms (YouTube, TikTok(s), Twitter, Weibo, Twitch, Douyu, Instagram, Kuaishuo) to aggregate and engage scaleable fan communities. These communities comprise commercial and cultural value and creators and wanghong have emerged as drivers of economic and cultural disruption, while signaling towards the future of work in emerging creative, digital, social, gig and platform economies. Their work is featured in journal articles, book chapters, and a series of books, including Social Media Entertainment (NYU Press, 2019), Wang Hong (Palgrave, 2020) and Creator Culture (NYU Press, 2021).

Craig is also a veteran, Emmy-nominated, Hollywood producer and TV programming executive, as well as publishing executive and theatre producer. Over the past three decades, he helped produce over 30 films, television movies and series, web series, documentaries, books, graphic novels, and stage productions. These projects have garnered over 70 Emmy, Golden Globe, Peabody and Humanities prizes and nominations, more often foreground topics around cultural heritage, history, literature or social issues, and were made available commercial-free as pedagogy for schools across the country.

As an activist, Craig serves on the Board and Jury of the Social Impact Media Awards. For decades, he has been involved in the LGBTQ social movement. He was an early board member of GLAAD, producer of multiple LGBTQ-themed TV movies and plays, featured in a number of books on LGBTQ marriage equality, and has conducted research and delivered lectures as a queer media scholar and historian. His UCLA dissertation mapped the critical production and cultural pedagogical history of LGBT-themed TV movies over the past half-century from That Certain Summer (1972) to The Normal Heart (2014).

Shantanu Dutta is an expert on strategic marketing, especially in high technology markets. He also studies how firms use distribution, partnerships, and value pricing to build competitive advantage.

His research has been published in leading marketing, economics, and management journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Management Science, and Strategic Management Journal. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Science.

Terry Flew is Head of Film and Television, Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is an international recognised leader in media and communications, with research interests in digital media, global media, media policy, creative industries, media economics, and the future of journalism. He is the author of Australia’s leading new media textbook, New Media: An Introduction, which has sold over 15,000 copies over four editions (2002, 2005, 2008, 2014). He is also the author of Understanding Global Media (Palgrave, 2018 – second edition), Media Economics (Palgrave, 2015), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013), Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (Sage, 2012), Key Concepts in Creative Industries (Sage, 2013). He has edited Willing Collaborators: Refashioning Content for the Chinese Media Market (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, with Michale Keane and Brian Yecies). Global Media and National Policies: The Return of the State (Palgrave, 2016, with Petros Iosifidis and Jeanette Steemers), and Creative Industries and Urban Development: Creative Cities in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2012).

His work has been published in leading international media, communications and cultural studies journals including Media, Culture and Society, Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism, Global Media and China, International Journal of Communication, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Television and New Media, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and International Journal of Cultural Studies. His work has been translated into Chinese, Arabic, Polish and Turkish.

He has also advised policy makers and policy communities in Australia and internationally, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), New America Foundation, Australian Communications and Media Authority, Media Development Authority of Singapore, Russian Association of Electronic Communication, Productivity Commission, Gilbert + Tobin, and the Special Minister of State of the Australian Federal government.

Sherwood Hu, "one of the most exciting and dynamic directors that emerge from China" (Kirt Honycutt, Hollywood Reporter). Born and raised in Shanghai in a creative and artistic family, Sherwood relocated to the US to study his Masters of Arts degree in New York State University and earned a Ph.D. in directing from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He also studied at The Public Theater in New York under Joseph Papp, and began his professional career directing in theatre, including productions of Rashomon, Constant Prince and The Chairman's Wife. He also acted in the lead role of Song Liling in several productions of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly.

Hu created The Legend of Prince Lanling, a lavish stage production set in ancient China; this received an Honorable Mention Award from the Kennedy Arts Center. He later adapted this into his first feature film, the epic Warrior Lanling, which was launched in the 1995 Telluride Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival and others.

In 1998, Francis Ford Coppola and Wayne Wang were executive producers of his second feature, one of the first co-productions between American and China. Lani Loa - The Passage was a Hawaiian ghost story/cop movie/spiritual love story, shot in Shanghai and Hawaii, and starred Angus Macfadyen, Ray Bumatai and Chris Tashima. Tashima also starred in his next film, On The Roof (2002), a small indie DV ensemble piece filmed in Pasadena, California.

In 2003, Hu returned to China to direct a 40-episode television series, Purple Jade for China Central Television, and a 30-episode TV series "The War of Peking". He returned to epic costume period film with Prince of the Himalayas (2007), his own adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, set in ancient Tibet, and performed entirely in the Tibetan language. The film received numerous awards including best picture, best director and best actor in several international film festivals.

Hu has also continued with theatre work, recently directing stage productions of A.R. Gurney's Sylvia, Jean-Paul Sartre's Dirty Hands and a modern ballet, Shakespeare and His Women, for the 8th Shanghai International Arts Festival (2006), and a stage production of Prince of the Himalayas (2007) for the 9th Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Honored with the title of "Eastern Scholar" a distinguished professor. He was invited by Shanghai TV station Art and Culture channel hosting the only Film Critique program Hu on Silver Screen since 2009. And he was the artistic director of 2010 World Expo Shanghai Pavilion, which is one of the most popular pavilions in the Expo.

From 2018, Hu served as tenured professor at ICCI at SJTU where he supervises and mentors graduate and PhD students.

Professor JIANG received his Ph.D in Business Administration from Nanjing University. He received instructions upon scientific research from Professor Spence (1980 Nobel Prize winner in Economics) and Professor Klein (2001 Nobel Prize winner in Economics). He used to be the visiting scholar in HEC Montréal of Université de Montréal and received systematic training from its International Training Center.

Professor JIANG has been working at Shanghai Jiao Tong University since 2004. His main research fields of interest include media operation, culture industry administration, and new media management. Professor Jiang has experiences of business operation and management in various industries, ranging from manufacturing to financial service, cultural industry and government. He used to be a director of manufacturing factory, a former general manager of one major securities and investment company, a CEO of a digital company, as well as a real estate development company; and he also worked in government departments such as the Economic Planning Committee of Jiangsu Province.

Professor JIANG has received numerous awards. He has published 3 major monographs on new media management. He has presided several National Natural Science Foundation projects and “863” projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology. He received the “Personal Achievement Award” in IT application from the Chinese State Information Center in 2007 and in 2011 he was awarded the first prize of Wangxuan News Science and Technology Award. Professor JIANG is now in charge of a number of enterprise technology and management development projects, and is considered an innovative scholar crossing art and science, combining theory and practice.

Professor at Goldsmiths (University of London), Computing Department with a range research projects of which he is PI or Co-PI (working with Prof Frederic Leymarie) Pioneering computer Artist and VR Experience Creator (Primarily HTC Vive). Company Director of Games Development and machine learning company SoftV working with UCL Department of Cognitive Neuroscience.

CEO of Computer Games Company. (Developing games for Playstation, Xbox, PC, Online and Mobile). Contract negotiation and closure (£100K to $5m).

Creative Director: Computer Games, Film special effects, music video direction. Managed company up to 100 employees.

Specialties: Computer Art and VR. Contract Negotiation, Company CEO and man Management. Inventive Sales and Marketing. Art and Design Skills. Creative Direction.

Ben Lee earned his Ph.D. from USC Annenberg in 2005, and now serves as a Clinical Professor. His primary instructional duties involve teaching with fellow faculty in the Communication Management graduate core and research practicum courses.

In the Communication Management program, Lee also serves as its Associate Director. In this role, he acts as the equivalent of a chief operational officer – coordinating faculty efforts with key staff functions in admissions, academic advisement, and career development, as well as supporting faculty in building rigorous and quality experiences for students.

Many of his students hail from China, and through them he has learned much about the nation's economy, society and people. He has been consulted much about developments in China's higher education, by both public and private institutions. He now leads USC Annenberg's collaboration with different Chinese universities, advising on faculty, curriculum, and programs. He also directs a research center in Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry. The research from the center and his students focus on the most current social media entertainment, new television formats, new media firms' strategies and execution, and American entertainment firms seeking to understand Chinese audiences.

As a scholar and practitioner, Lee is intensely curious about human performance – how individuals, organizations and societies survive and thrive, especially in volatile and uncertain environments. His expertise has been especially relevant for China's experience.

Professor Ke Xue is the vice dean of USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). She obtained her Master of Economics in Fudan University and Doctor of Management in Nankai University. Then she worked as a post-doc in Management Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and in Business Administration at Peking University.

She received funding from New Century Outstanding Talent Support Program from Ministry of Education. She was awarded March 8 Red Banner Holder from Shanghai Education System, Best Paper Award from Ministry of Education, First Prize in the National Education Scientific Research Innovation, Outstanding Academic Papers on 4th Globe Communication Forum, Journalism Award at Shanghai, Second Prize in Teaching Achievement at Shanghai, “The Most Popular Teacher Award” of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), “The Prominent Teacher Award”, “The Prominent Head Teacher Award”, etc.

She led or participated in more than forty programs, such as the Program of National Social Science Fund Program, Program of Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science, Key Program of Shanghai Education Committee, etc. She also participated in the brand consulting projects of China Unicom, Microsoft China, SMG, etc.

She has published eleven books and over one hundred papers in Public Relation Review, Journal of Quality & Quantity, Communication & Society, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Natural Science), Journalism and Communication, Journal of Tongji University, Chinese Journal of International & Communication, Modern Communication, Contemporary Communications, Journalism Review, Dongyue Tribune and other SSCI, CSSCI, EI magazines. Her papers were cited by RDFY many times.