As the inaugural event of the Asian Media Industries Network, the International Symposium on Media Work in Asia brings together scholars and practitioners to examine the conditions, practices, and challenges of media labour across Asian contexts.

The symposium responds to the need for greater attention to Asia within research on media work and creative labour — a field that has often been shaped by Euro-American assumptions and case studies. While an emerging body of scholarship has begun to address creative labour in Asia, this work remains uneven and fragmented across linguistic, national, and disciplinary boundaries, with some regions and media industries still significantly underrepresented.

By foregrounding regional and inter-Asian perspectives, the symposium aims to create a space for collective thinking about media labour in Asia — and about how Asian media industries can contribute to broader theoretical debates on labour, precarity, professionalism, cultural production, and the creative economy. The event also marks the launch of the Asian Media Industries Network, jointly based at CMCI, King's College London and WKWSCI, Nanyang Technological University.

Mission

The symposium seeks to redress the geographic and epistemic imbalance in scholarship on media work and labour by showcasing research on Asian media contexts that have often been marginal to dominant Euro-American frameworks. It aims to foster inter-Asian dialogue and comparison across diverse media sectors, sites, and histories, while encouraging reflection on how research grounded in Asia might reshape existing theories of creative labour.

More broadly, the symposium is intended as a platform for building sustained intellectual exchange — supporting new comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to media labour, seeding future collaborations and publications, and strengthening connections among scholars working across Asia and beyond.

Keynote Speakers

Hosts