David is a doctoral student in geography at St Antony’s College. He adopts an interdisciplinary approach that bridges human geography and anthropology. He holds an MPhil and a BA (First Class Honours) in Anthropology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as an MA in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. From sex work to real estate investment, David’s research is focused on the intersection between money and morality, and how their boundaries are produced and negotiated by ordinary people, businesses, governments and scholars in an increasingly digital age.
His previous work foregrounds an insider perspective of morality among sex workers in Hong Kong. He observed that, for middle-class gay sex workers, morality and respectability about sex/love/intimacy lie not in bodily or emotional purity but in the prospect of successful self-making. He also writes about collective memories, alternative politics, and affective experience of political transformation. His publications and public writings are seen on Men and Masculinities (2024), Sexualities (2023), and FOCAAL Blog (2024). He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Hong Kong, Peru and Korea. He is currently serving as the Student Councilor at the Society for East Asian Anthropology (2025–2027).
DPhil Topic
Fully funded by a Hong Kong Jockey Club Graduate Scholarship, David’s DPhil research examines the intersection between housing economy and cultural citizenship, with a focus on migrants’ real estate investment. His project focuses on middle-class Hong Kong migrants and their housing investment in the UK in the context of the post-2019 emigration wave in Hong Kong. He is interested in how familial aspirations and responsibilities structure migrants’ housing investment, and how, in turn, these middle-class migrant families deploy real-estate investment to make claims about citizenship, belonging and rights in the host country. This project aims to address the intersection of housing market, transnational mobilities and intergenerational care, in order to shed light on the entangled relationship of capital, moral values and mobilities amid transnational housing investment.
