Adrian Wong (he/him) grew up in Murrieta, CA, as third child in a bi-racial family of 6 with a Chinese-immigrant father and a white, 6th generation Californian mother. Currently a PhD student and FLAS fellow in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, he is interested in processes of digital transformation with a focus on Chile-China relations and was able to conduct preliminary research toward his dissertation during the summer of 2022 with a Tinker Field Research Grant. Under a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship, Adrian will conduct 12 months of field research in Chile (2023-2024).

He most frequently works with and is intellectually indebted to (in no set order) Cameron McCarthy, Krystal Smalls, Jacob Bowers, Anita Say Chan and the Community Data Clinic, Nikki Usher and the Platforms, Politics, and Local News in Illinois research team, and the Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life. Prior to UIUC, in Los Angeles he performed quartets with Midori Goto as a Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and recorded three albums with his brother, Julian Wong, as part of the music project empty cloud. He loves learning new rhythms and yearns to gain fluency in Chinese-Mandarin, getting close! As his father had been a monk, he learned to meditate before learning to use chopsticks and strives to bring an eastern, spiritual sensitivity to his life and work.