Choi Sin-yi (Emilie) is a PhD student at the City University of Hong Kong, with an MPhil degree from Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts. Her current research scrutinizes the elemental aspects of media infrastructure in shaping smart cities in East Asia, specifically focusing on the role of water in Hong Kong’s media technology and urban intelligence. Her research intersects media studies, cultural studies, environmental humanities and critical infrastructure studies, encompassing eco-media, digital humanities, AI and visual culture, cinema culture and media networks in East Asia during the Cold War era. 

Choi’s work has been selected for international conferences, including the Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2024 conference, and the Association for Asian Studies 2022 conference. She has also contributed a chapter in the book The 70s Bi-weekly: Autonomous Media, Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in 1970s Hong Kong and a journal paper in Modernism/modernity Print Plus. She is a co-editor of “Post-2019 Hong Kong Cinema: Paradox and Polarization,” in the Journal of Chinese Cinema (forthcoming) and a forthcoming Hong Kong film anthology. She has previously presented her research at renowned institutions such as transmediale in Berlin, Germany and the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 

Beyond academia, Choi is actively engaged in art criticism and curatorial work, serving on the boards of Videotage and Unlock Dancing Plaza in Hong Kong. She has also curated several film programmes and visual arts exhibitions, including Jumping Frames – Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival, Hong Kong Retrospective Documentary Film Festival: From 80s to 1997, Docuthon, Macao Experimental Cinema, and Nothing has Happened. She has been selected for the Curatorial Program for Research 2023: (RE)PRESENTATION IN THE NORDICS.