Hannah Poon received the NWO funding for PhD in the Humanities at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) in 2022. Her PhD project is titled 'Surviving in Abeyance: Digital Networks and Resistance in Hong Kong after the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement'. Her work has been published in New Media & Society journal. She had been a lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University and a teaching assistant at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before starting her PhD. She obtained her Research Master's degree in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and her Bachelor degree in Political Science and American Studies at the University of Hong Kong.

Surviving in Abeyance: Digital Networks and Resistance in Hong Kong after the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement

As Hong Kong’s 2019-20 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement ended under the pressure of the new National Security Law, activist networks find their ways of survival by shifting to other arenas that are less controlled by the regime: consumer marketplace, fan culture, and overseas diasporic communities. Taking these social networks as case studies, this project asks: what new forms of connection and resistance are enabled by digital technologies after the Anti-ELAB movement has ended, and how do these tactics impact political struggles in non-democratic societies like Hong Kong?

Supervisors: Jeroen de Kloet, Leonie Schmidt

Conference presentations

June 4-7, 2023. 'Archiving the Street: Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Collecting Multimedia Protest Artefacts.' (co-presentation). Eye International Conference 2023. Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

May 8-10, 2023. '"Hong Kong’s Biggest Buycott Club": Activist mobile app in sustaining a social movement in abeyance.' Technology in Movement, Movement in Technology International conference. University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

May 26-30, 2022. '"Hong Kongers Only": Identity and Dissensus in the Anti-ELAB Movement.' 72nd Annual International Communication Association Conference, One World, One Network?. Paris, France.

May 26-30, 2022. 'Flows Like Water: The Aesthetics and Politics of Lennon Walls in Hong Kong’s Anti-ELAB Movement.' (poster presentation). 72nd Annual International Communication Association Conference, One World, One Network?. Paris, France.

October 22, 2021. 'Hong Kong's Yellow Economic Circle: Buycott/Boycott as a New Form of Multi-modal Resistance.' P(R)OTESTAS: International Workshop on the Politics and Aesthetics of Digital Authoritarianism and Protest. Global Digital Cultures, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

May 23-25, 2021. 'Staying on the Streets: Dilemmas of Activism in the COVID-19 Pandemic.' (co-presentation). Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) International Workshop. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Guest speaking and moderation

January 15, 2023. Moderator, Blue Island film screening, Studio/K, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

December 9, 2022. Panel speaker, OBA expo: Digital Shadows, Waag Society, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

November 24, 2022. Discussant, Umbrella Diaries film screening, Cinema Politica Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

November 23, 2022. Guest lecture speaker, Politics of the Contemporary, Master's in Comparative Literature, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.