Speakers

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.

Professor Zhang currently serves as the Dean of ICCI. He has been engaged in the training and researching of interdisciplinary composite talents cultivation for many years.

Zhang Weimin graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a bachelor's degree in materials science and engineering in 1987. In 1995 and 2007, he received a master's degree in metal heat treatment and a doctorate in engineering from SJTU. From July 1987 to April 1995, he served as an assistant engineer and engineer of Shanghai Institute of Welding Technology (Jiatong University) of Light Industry. Since May 1995, he has been an engineer and lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of SJTU. Since 1998, he has served as an associate professor and as a professor from 2008 onwards.

Zhang Weimin has served as executive deputy director of the Institute of Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering Intelligence, and deputy dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering. From 2006 to 2010, he served as deputy director of the Human Resource Office of SJTU and director of Global Affairs Office from 2010 to 2016. Since December 2017, he has served as dean of ICCI. He has won the first prize of scientific and technological progress (technical invention) in China, the second prize of national scientific and technological progress, and the first prize of scientific and technological progress of the Ministry of Education.