Gaik Cheng Khoo

gaikchengk [at] sunway.edu.my 

Sunway University

gaikchengkhoo

Gaik Cheng Khoo is Professor in the Department of Film and Performing Arts at Sunway University, Malaysia. She is also the Deputy Dean of Research and Sustainability in the School of Arts at Sunway.

Gaik is interested in cosmopolitanism, citizenship and questions of belonging and identity as manifested in film, food and space. She has three main prongs of research: film, Korean migrants and the durian. Her work examines Korean migrants in Malaysia as exemplary of generational and attitudinal changes among South Koreans. As transnational migrants on the move for studies, work, play, or retirement, they register in complex, layered and sometimes contradictory ways, a kind of resistance to traditional stereotypes of S. Korean middle class aspirations and status. Gaik is also interested in how temporality, modernity and happiness figure in their migration and settlement. Her current research is on a political economy of the Malaysian durian, focusing on the supply chain based on a Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme project (2020 – 2024).

Recent publications include: 

Khoo, Gaik Cheng & Rusaslina Idrus. “Countering Durian Plantationocene Visuals and the erasure of natureculture histories in Malaysia.” Continuum, Feb 2024, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2024.2321305 

Khoo, Gaik Cheng. “‘Still Doing It Themselves, With a Little Help From Friends’: Independent Filmmaking in Malaysia Two Decades Hence,” pp.382-391. Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas. Eds. Zhang Zhen, Sangjoon Lee, Debashree Mukherjee and Intan Paramaditha. (June 2024) DOI: 10.4324/9781003266952-44 

Khoo, Gaik Cheng & Jean Duruz. “A Whiff of Southeast Asia: Tasting Durian and Kopi.” In Scentscapes: Sensory Exchanges in Asia. Eds. Gwyn McClelland and Hannah Gould. Penn State University Press, 2023. 

Khoo, Gaik Cheng & Choo Tze Shien. “Durian: a fruit of taste and identity.” In Italy and Malaysia: Politics,  Economy and Culture, edited by Romeo Orlandi. Italy: AREL (the Italy-ASEAN Association), 2021.