Dr. Troy Chen

Dr. Zhen Troy Chen-Sunggiya Hala (known as Dr. Troy Chen), PhD, FHEA, is a Senior Lecturer in Advertising and Professional Communication in the School of Communication and Design at RMIT University Vietnam. He is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the MXII Innovation Institute, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. He has accumulated over 15 years of experience in international higher education, serving in a range of roles—from academic services and marketing to lecturing and serving as a senator-elect.

Troy’s research spans advertising, digital media, algorithmic culture, cybernetics, cultural and gender studies, cultural and creative industries, media and cultural policy, experience design, and China and Asia studies.

He is the author of China’s Music Industry Unplugged (Palgrave, 2021) and co-editor of Identity, Space, and Everyday Life in Contemporary Northeast China (Palgrave, 2024). His work has been widely published in leading journals including the Journal of Consumer Culture, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Ethics and Information Technology, Social Semiotics, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Asian Studies Review, SAGE Research Methods, Journal of Chinese Sociology, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Feminist Review, and Global Media and China, among others.

He is the co-editor (with Prof. Celia Lam) of a special issue titled Chinese Fandoms: Prosumers, Communities, and Identities in Transformative Works and Cultures (link). Troy currently serves on the editorial board of Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, a Nature Portfolio journal, where he is also co-editing a special issue on The Manosphere and Networked Misogyny (link).

Beyond academia, he is an award-winning communication and marketing professional in international higher education, with extensive experience across China, Vietnam, the UK, and globally. His commentaries, reports, and multimedia productions have been featured in mainstream media and leading digital outlets. He also brings industry experience from the media, consultancy, IT, and finance sectors, where his research is actively shaped and applied. He is a sought-after international speaker and regular media commentator on marketing and cultural studies, contributing to platforms such as Politico, South China Morning Post, The Paper, and Rest of World.