Denise Tang

Denise Tse-Shang Tang is an interdisciplinary ethnographer specializing in gender, lesbian sexualities, social spaces and cultural politics in Chinese societies. Tang is the recipient of 2023 Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (Hong Kong) and the Hunt-Simes Visiting Chair of Sexuality Studies at the University of Sydney. Tang’s book Conditional Spaces: Hong Kong Lesbian Desires and Everyday Life (Hong Kong University Press, 2011), maps the complex relations between personal subjectivities and spatialities as they emerge and interact with various social justice movements and alternative communities. She has published in The Sociological Review, Crime, Media, Culture, Sexualities, Media, Culture & Society, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Tang’s current book project is on inter-Asia intimacies among older lesbians and bisexual women in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Present ethnographic focus is on everyday lives of trans men in Thailand and Hong Kong.

Prior to entering academia, Tang worked as program manager and HIV testing counselor for communities including LGBTQI Asian & Pacific Islander youth, survivors of sexual violence, First Nations women, HIV-affected communities and youth in juvenile justice system, in San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver B.C. She coordinated the first queer A&PI oral history exhibit, Leaving Silence: Queer Asian & Pacific Islander Oral History Exhibit (Seattle) and the first queer Asian conference in Vancouver B.C., Lotus Roots (funded under Health Canada). Upon returning back to Hong Kong, Tang became the film festival director with the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.