Dr Sim Jiaying received her PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Glasgow in 2018 and her MA in English Literature from Nanyang Technological University in 2013. Her research and creative practice explore expanded cinema, decolonial aesthetics, and multisensory storytelling at the intersections of art, ecology, and technology. Working across film curation, immersive media, and arts education, her teaching and research interests include Southeast Asian cinema, transnational screen cultures, and creative-critical methodologies that bridge theory and practice.
Dr Sim is also the founder of Singapore Film Database (SGFilmDB), a digital resource documenting Singapore’s film ecosystem through information, images, posters, and critical information on local productions, funding opportunities and exhibition spaces. She has served as a film programmer for the 35th (2024) and 36th (2025) Singapore International Film Festival. In 2025, she was selected as one of two global fellows for the Hyundai Artlab Editorial Fellowship, producing a series of commissioned essays on contemporary art in Southeast Asia.
Prior to joining HKU, she taught at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore University of Social Sciences, and DigiPen Singapore @ Singapore Institute of Technology, where she designed interdisciplinary modules on storytelling, media, and cultural theory. Her academic writings have appeared in Film-Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Film Studies, Screen Ethics and Global Politics (Edinburgh University Press), and the Handbook of Queer Southeast Asia (Routledge). More at simjiaying.com
Expanded cinema and immersive media
Film programming and curation as pedagogy
Decolonial aesthetics and sensory epistemologies
Singapore film history, archives and digital humanities
Transnational and Southeast Asian screen cultures
Assemblage and affect theory
ENGL2190 Special topics in 19th-century literature
ENGL7108 Imagining Asia
ENGL7994A Capstone experience: Final research project