Jack Hang Tat Leong

Jack Leong is Associate Dean for York University Libraries’ (YUL) Research and Open Scholarship Division. As a member of YUL’s senior leadership team, he provides strategic direction and stewardship York’s intellectual assets, managed by the Libraries.

Jack was the founding Director of the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto, having served since 2007. In that role, he provided leadership in building the largest research collection on Hong Kong and Chinese Canadian studies in North America. He planned and established the new facility funded by a three million dollar donation with collaboration from units across the library system.

Jack is a scholar and researcher. His scholarly interests and publications include international and community engagement, access to resources, science fiction, Chinese Canadian studies and intercultural studies. He has extensive experience stewarding major research collections and leading collaborative digital initiatives that heightened the visibility and impact of these research collections through open access platforms. These include: the Hong Kong Handover Collection Digitization Project (2008–10), Chinese Diaspora in Toronto (2010–17), Hong Kong Basic Law Portal (2013), the Hong Kong-Canada Crosscurrents Project (2014–19), the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement Archive (2014) and the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project (2015).

Jack is also well known for his community-building accomplishments and international leadership. In roles spanning Secretary for the Board of Directors of the Asian Heritage Month in Ontario, Chair of the IFLA (International Federation of Larry Associations) Standing Committee on Library Services for Multicultural Populations,and Chair of the International and Community Outreach Committee for the University of Toronto Libraries, Jack hosted exhibit activities for transmitting and visualizing research, coordinated many international partnerships and organized many cultural heritage events to celebrate the cultural heritage of Asian Heritage Month.

Jack has degrees in computer science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (BSc), education from OISE (BEd), English literature, Chinese University of Hong Kong (MPHIL, PhD), and library and information science (MISt). His PhD dissertation investigates the concepts of ideology and utopia in science fiction from Canada, the United States, Poland, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.