Dr Herbary Cheung (he/him/his) is a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Born, raised and educated in the States, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Herbary received his PhD in Asian and Policy Studies from The Education University of Hong Kong under the prestigious Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) from the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong. He is an awardee of the Ernst Mach Grant - worldwide from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF).

Trained as a feminist sociologist and Southeast Asianist, Herbary believes “knowledge is co-produced in ethnographic research”. His research engages with gender and migration, family, marriage and health, intersectionality, and contextual mobility, focusing on Hong Kong-Southeast Asia connections. As a polyglot, Herbary speaks English, Thai, Cantonese, Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, and Laotian.

Herbary has published in high-quality refereed journals, including the Culture, Health & Sexuality, Journal of Family Studies, Journal of Sociology, and South East Asia Research (ranked 1/100 in Asian Studies in A&HCI edition 2022). His research outputs have advanced both theoretical and methodological approaches in gendered migration studies, critical family and health studies, and studies on intersectionality, postcolonialism and ethnography. His monograph, Engendering Migration Journey: Identity, Ethnicity and Gender of Thai Migrant Women in Hong Kong is published under the Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship series of Palgrave Macmillan (2023).

Herbary is a Research Associate at the Institut de Recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (IRASEC), French Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia, supported by the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE - UMIFRE 22) and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS - UAR 3142) and Associate Member of “BelMix” research team,  working on migration and conjugal mixedness in Europe-Asia social spaces at the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC) of the Université libre de Bruxelles. Inspired by “power in unity”, Herbary serves as an executive committee member of The Hong Kong Society for Asylum-Seekers and Refugees (HKSASR), the first refugee-led organization jointly managed by local Hong Kongers and refugees since 2019.