Allan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Bristol. As a historian of Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the Chinese overseas, Allan examines the intertwined histories of knowledge production, culture, and Chinese identities through a transregional lens across East and Southeast Asia. He received his BA and MPhil from the University of Hong Kong and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Research

His book project, Rewriting Chineseness: Decolonisation and the Politics of Didactic Histories in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore (under review), examines the transnational origins of national histories from the 1950s to the 1990s. The study analyses history education in schools and informal pedagogical settings such as monuments, public campaigns, and children's magazines. It demonstrates how the Cold War, decolonisation, and Chinese politics reshaped competing ideas of Chineseness through curricula, textbooks, and public history campaigns. By bringing Chinese case studies into conversation with histories of British and American imperialism, his research shows how academics, officials, students, and teachers sought to shape the politics of the past and construct postcolonial futures. 

Allan is also developing a new project on transregional Chinese popular music across Hong Kong and Southeast Asia since the 1950s. It explores the role of music in the global politics of migration and Chinese identities. The research investigates how musicians, singers, entrepreneurs, and activists exercised transregional agency through the popular music industry. Rather than focusing solely on musical works, it examines the processes of musical production in the contexts of the Cold War, Chinese migration, and political transitions. More broadly, this research contributes to the global history of music by foregrounding Asian perspectives. In particular, it traces the transregional circulation of Cantonese popular songs (Cantopop) by Hong Kong composer Joseph Koo and lyricist James Wong, Singaporean Xinyao, and Taiwanese campus folk songs. 

Allan's earlier research investigated cultural policies in late colonial Hong Kong. It examined how colonial officials attempted to preserve, promote, and shape Chinese culture through language policies, entertainment, and even postage stamps.

Publications

Journal articles

'Contesting Epistemological Territory: History Education and Decolonisation in Hong Kong’, Itinerario 50, no. 1 (2026), 92-106. 

'Entertainment, Chinese Culture, and Late Colonialism in Hong Kong’, Historical Journal 67, no. 1 (2024), 124-47. 

'Stamping “Imagination and Sensibility”: Objects, Culture, and Governance in Late Colonial Hong Kong', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 50, no. 4 (2022), 789-816.

• Shortlisted for the Best Article on Global Hong Kong Studies 2023, ICAS (International Convention of Asia Scholars) Book Prize

Book chapters

‘Hong Kong in Cantopop: Constructing the “Pearl” in Southeast Asia and the Wider World’, in Hong Kong Arts: Historical Inquiry through Creative Lens, ed. Lee Cheng and Magdelena Ho-yan Tang (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

‘Education’, in A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997, ed. Florence Mok and Chi Keung Charles Fung (Hong Kong University Press, 2025), 198-220.

‘Cultural Policies’, in A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997, ed. Florence Mok and Chi Keung Charles Fung (Hong Kong University Press, 2025), 246-66. 

盛世前奏：六十年代香港流行曲的星馬跨國網絡 [A Prelude to Prosperity: Transnational Networks of Hong Kong’s Popular Music in Singapore and Malaysia, c. 1960s], in 粵語流行曲七十年 [Seventy Years of Cantopop], ed. Chu Yiu-Wai 朱耀偉 (Enlighten & Fish 亮光文化, 2024), 35-57 (in Chinese).

Teaching

Allan is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. At the University of Bristol, he has taught on the following units:

• HIST10070: Hong Kong History Summer School Programme (Unit director)

• HIST20143: Asia in Global Perspective (Second-year unit)

• HIST20158: Hong Kong and the World (Second-year Special Field)

• HISTM1000: Dissertation (MA supervision)

Previously, Allan taught courses on twentieth-century world history, East and Southeast Asian history, and historiography. 

Impact and Public Outreach

Since 2025, Allan has collaborated with Imagined Malaysia, a Malaysian NGO, to develop a public education campaign titled 'Malaysia Unbound: Transregional Histories through Documents'. This campaign explores Malaysia's transregional connections in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to uncover an inclusive and interconnected Malaysian past. Through infographics published on social media, it introduces a rich variety of primary sources, such as magazines, songs, legal records, and archival documents, that help the public understand Malaysia's past beyond geographical and temporal boundaries. The team is also developing an interactive digital map, where users can access the campaign's outputs, including links to the infographics. Through his collaboration with Imagined Malaysia, Allan seeks to democratise access to historical knowledge and make recent scholarship on Southeast Asian history accessible to wider audiences.

At the Hong Kong History Centre, he contributes to public engagement through public talks and the online lecture series 'Hong Kong History Academy'.