I am Leverhulme Early Career Fellow based at the School of Modern Languages. Prior to this appointment I was Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project, 'Gendering Murakami Haruki', hosted at the same School. My degrees include a doctorate in English and Comparative Literary Studies from Warwick, an MPhil in Gender Studies and a BA in English from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

My main research interest is postcolonial and world literatures with an East Asian focus, specialising in Japanese, Hong Kong, and Chinese literatures. 

In addition to the Murakami project, I am one of the founding editors of Hong Kong Studies, the world's only bilingual academic journal specifically devoted to Hong Kong. I am also staff reviewer at Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, where I have established an extensive profile of reviews of Asian literature (see here for a list of reviews I have published).

World Literature and 20th Century East Asia: A Bibliomigrancy Approach

This project investigates how political, economic and cultural contact with the West helped revolutionise a literary culture in 20th-century Japan and China. Drawing on B. Venkat Mani's framework of 'bibliomigrancy' (2017), which pays attention to the materiality of books and libraries in the global circulation of books, I examine how literary contact with the West inspired the emergence of book series, bookstores, magazines, and libraries in 20th-century China and Japan, shaping the two countries' literary cultures.

Literary and cultural contact, I argue, did not only take place on the level of content (e.g. how one writer's work or style inspires another writer's), but also occurred at the broader level of the book industry, whether it's the printing (publishing houses), selling (bookstores), or storing (libraries) of books. A discussion of world literature cannot disregard the agencies and subjectivities of those involved in these processes.

Murakami Haruki studies: Gender, Transmediality, Politics

Prior to being a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow I was Research Associate on the Gendering Murakami project in 2018, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of the moment when the Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki first came up with the idea of writing a novel. Even earlier, I completed a master's thesis on gender representation in Murakami's novels.

As part of the research output to the Gender Murakami project, I and Dr Gitte Hansen have co-edited a special issue on Murakami Haruki at Japan Forum. We have also secured with Routledge a contract for an edited volume based on our academic conference (forthcoming). Publications in this area include:

• Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage. (co-edited with Gitte Marianne Hansen; 50% contribution). Routledge, forthcoming.
• 40 Years with Murakami Haruki. (co-edited with Gitte Marianne Hansen; 50% contribution). Special issue of Japan Forum 32.3 (2020).
• 'Politics in/of Transmediality in Murakami Haruki's Bakery Attack Stories.' (co-written with Gitte Marianne Hansen; 50% contribution). Japan Forum 32.3 (2020): 404-431.
• Translation: 'The Problem of Tatemashi in Murakami Haruki's Work: Comparing The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84' by Kato Norihiro. Japan Forum 32.3 (2020): 318-337.
• 'Who's the Egg? Who's the Wall? -- Appropriating Murakami Haruki's 'Always on the Side of the Egg' Speech in Hong Kong.' Japanese Political Thought and International Relations. Ed. Felix Roesch and Watanabe Atsuko. Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. 221-251. [Research in this chapter is updated in this blog post for the Hong Kong Studies Association in 2019. I also discussed this research in a recent 2020 episode of the 'Beyond Japan' podcast series for the Centre of Japanese Studies, University of East Anglia.]

Hong Kong Studies

My doctorate was on Hong Kong English-language writing, and I am a founding editor of Hong Kong Studies, the world's first bilingual academic journal devoted to Hong Kong. Some of my publications include:

• 'Beyond the Spoon-feeding Classroom: A Jesuit Priest's Use of Outings as Holistic Education.' (co-written with Daniel Fung). Education About Asia 24.1 (2019): 22-27.
• 'Hong Kong Handover to China.' The British Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 2. Ed. Mark Doyle. ABC-CLIO, 2018. 33-35.
• 'Hong Kong as a Test Case in World Literature.' Sanglap 4.1 (2017): 9-23.
• 'In Dialogue: Contesting the Politics of Globalization in Hong Kong Literature in English.' The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Literature. Ed. Michael O’Sullivan, David Huddart and Carmen Lee. London: Routledge, 2016. 173-89.
• 'Educational Inequalities in Higher Education in Hong Kong.' (co-written with Michael O’Sullivan) Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16.3 (2015): 454-69.
• 'English writing as Neo-colonial Resistance: An Exchange of English Poetry in Hong Kong.' Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature 8.2 (2014): 36-56.

Other interests and outputs

I am a staff reviewer for Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. I am also published in the following publications:

• 'Teaching Manga as a Phenomenon of Global Commodity Production and Consumption.' Japan in the World; The World in Japan: A Methodological Approach. Ed. Irina Holca and Carmen Sapunaru Tamas. Romania: Editura Pro Universitaria, 2019. 78-100.
• '楊逸の作品における在日中国人の異文化適応について――文化変容を中心に [Strategies of Intercultural Adaptation for Zainichi Chugokujin (Chinese Residents in Japan): A Study on Acculturation in the Novels of Yang Yi].' 日本学刊[Japan Journal, Hong Kong] 14 (2011): 224-38.

2017-Present. School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

• SML2013: Surveying East Asian Literatures
• JPN1005: Introduction to Japanese History and Society
• JPN2004: Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture 
• JPN4006: Literary and Cultural Expressions in Contemporary Japan
• JPN4010: Level C (HE Advanced) Japanese
• JPN4061: Level D (HE Further Advanced) Japanese

2012-2017. Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, The University of Warwick

• Modern World Literatures
  
• Global City Literature
• New Literatures in English
• Modes of Reading

2009-2011. Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Gender and Literature
• Introduction to Literature
• Renaissance to Enlightenment

• Hansen GM, Tsang M. Politics in/of Transmediality in Murakami Haruki’s Bakery Attack Stories. Japan Forum 2020, 32(3), 404-431.
• Tsang M. Who's the Egg? Who's the Wall? - Appropriating Haruki Murakami’s “Always on the Side of the Egg” Speech in Hong Kong. In: Felix Roesch and Atsuko Watanabe, ed. Modern Japanese Political Thought and International Relations. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, pp.221-240.
• Tsang M. Hong Kong as a Test Case for World Literature. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry 2017, 4(1), 9-23.
• Tsang M. In Dialogue: Contesting the Politics of Globalization in Hong Kong Literature in English. In: O’Sullivan M; Huddart D; Lee C, ed. The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Literature. London: Routledge, 2016, pp.173–189.
• O'Sullivan M, Tsang M. Educational Inequalities in Higher Education in Hong Kong. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2015, 16(3), 454-469.