Born in China, Hongwei Bao completed two bachelor’s degrees—in English and journalism—at Xi’an International Studies University and Peking University respectively. He worked as a lecturer in intercultural communication at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing for several years before pursuing a PhD in Australia.
He completed a doctoral degree in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. After leaving Sydney, he went to Berlin on a DAAD scholarship and later to London on a British Academy fellowship. He taught at Potsdam University in Germany and Nottingham Trent University in the UK for a short while before taking up a position as assistant professor in media studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is currently an associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Nottingham, where he also co-directs the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies. Hongwei is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Queer Politics in Postsocialist China (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2008) and Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020). Hongwei has translated excerpts from classical Chinese opera texts including Farewell, My Concubine and At the Crossroads from Chinese to English for live theatre performances in 2004. He also translated English subtitles for many Chinese-language queer films, including Queer China, "Comrade" China (dir. Cui Zi’en, 2009) and New Beijing, New Marriage (dir. Fan Popo and David Zheng, 2009). Find him on Facebook as Hongwei Bao and on Twitter @PatrickBao1.
