Carissa specializes in world Anglophone literatures and criticism, postcolonial studies, and affect/emotion studies. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Carissa earned her BA in English from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and her Master of Studies in English (1900-present) from the University of Oxford. She recently completed her PhD in English at The Ohio State University.

Carissa’s research employs affect as a heuristic device to explore Hong Kong literature, including speculative fiction, science fiction, artists’ books, and zines. Her work aims to uncover new avenues of transformation by engaging with the past and envisioning alternative futures. Her scholarship has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Science Fiction Studies, Printing Culture, Cultural Studies, Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, and Oxford Research in English.

She has presented at numerous conferences, including the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference, the Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Conference, the American Comparative Literature Association’s (ACLA) Annual Meeting, the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Conference, and the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) Annual Conference, among others.

In addition to her academic work, Carissa is an amateur creative writer. Her original poetry has been featured in An Anthology of Twin Cinema from Singapore and Hong Kong (2017) and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (March 2015).