Jason Lau examines the design and impact of China-made mobile phones. With the intention to explore designs that propose alternative models to global conventions, he focuses on selected case studies, including the so-called dumsor phone—a mobile phone designed by a Hong Kong company and manufactured in Shenzhen that has found particular success as an export to Ghana. Lau’s research considers how Chinese designers use limitations as strategies, how the binary of mainstream and alternative can be redefined, and how unconventional designs can gain global influence.

Jason Lau is a fellow and received his PhD in anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. His research focuses on innovations in China, with particular attention on mobile phone design. He previously taught at Parsons School of Design and has conducted extensive research across China, including in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. His 2013–2018 study on the paradoxical relationship between innovation and the long-standing practice of imitation in China led him to define the term ‘Chinese alternative design’. He holds an MPhil in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong, and an MA and MPhil in cultural anthropology from the New School for Social Research.

Farzin Lotfi-Jam, from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, alongside Mark Wasiuta from Columbia University in New York, investigate the intensifying urban development pressures in Southeast Asia, with a focus on computational and data-driven planning. Increased reliance on technology has fundamentally changed the way in which urban planning is carried out, and this tendency is often positioned as a way for developing cities to skirt traditional planning and move effortlessly into a computationally organised future. By studying selected cities across Southeast Asia, Lotfi-Jam and Wasiuta explore the deep implications of computational development and ‘smart’ urban futures for the region.

Farzin Lotfi-Jam is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Cornell University where he directs the Realtime Urbanism lab. His research investigates how architecture and cities are transformed by digital technologies and their attendant power relations, looking at scales from the corporeal to the planetary. His work has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture, MAXXI, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and elsewhere.

Mark Wasiuta is co-director of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program at the GSAPP, Columbia University. His research exhibition practice focuses on architecture’s media, politics, and environments through under-examined projects of the postwar period. His work has been exhibited widely, including at the Graham Foundation, LAXArt, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Venice Architecture Biennale, MAXXI, and the Onassis Foundation. He was recently an inaugural Graham Foundation Fellow and is currently Guest Curator of Architecture at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

Sunnie Lau believes that human-centric design promotes inclusive communities with innovative sustainable design strategies and that urban designers and architects play important roles within the built environment. As a Registered Architect, she has been a regular design critic at architecture and urban design programmes. Taking up the roles of both practitioner and educator, she has been promoting architecture by designing, exhibiting, writing as outreach, and engaging communities. Her endeavours have included publicising her ongoing research on ‘Kowloon East Inclusive Innovation & Growth’, an urban research-oriented design seminar on ‘Urban Mobility and Smart Infrastructure’, the thesis initiative ‘Urban Resilience by Design – Adaptive Landscapes for PRD’, and facilitating dialogue between professionals, academics, and young professionals of various cross disciplinary platforms and institutions. She was co-curator and an exhibitor of the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, 2017 and 2019, as well as Venice Architecture Biennale, 2020-2021.

Lu Miao is Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, who takes a versatile research approach in the study of digital culture, AI, mobility, and information communications in a globalized world. As an awardee of the ICA Best Dissertation Award in 2022, Lu's dissertation titled “Deep Ploughing”: A mobile phone company’s technology translations between China and Ghana built her foundation of research in regions of the global south. Her consequent publications explored the intricate relations between psychology, sociology, and technology in the advent of new media.

As a presenter at conferences from 2015 to 2022, including the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference and the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Annual Conference, Lu looked into the relevant topics of body-technology, technological productions, and cyber behaviour.

Adam Jasper is currently Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He studied art history and philosophy in Freiburg, Melbourne, and Sydney, and in 2010 he obtained his doctorate. Previously, he was a researcher, lecturer, and chair at several institutions globally, including the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich, the University of Arts (UdK) in Berlin, and NCCR Iconic Criticism (NFS bildkritik) at Basel, among others. 

As a scholar whose research interests are rooted in architectural theories and criticism, he has edited Architectural Theory Review, gta papers, and Future Anterior, and published over 40 selected essays and book chapters. He has been invited as a lecturer and a presenter at conferences at institutionsincluding the Bartlett School of Architecture at the University College London, Université de Fribourg, NUS Singapore, and Centre Pompidou. He has curated several exhibitions and research installations, including Priests and Programmers, part of the inaugural Sharjah Architectural Triennial, Rights of Future Generations.