Cecilia L. Chu is Associate Professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Trained as an urban historian with a background in design and conservation, Chu's research and teaching focus on the social and cultural processes that shape the forms and meanings of built environments and their impacts on local communities, particularly in Asia. Informing her work is an interest in the design and representation of spaces (as buildings, landscapes, and infrastructures) and the production of their social meanings and values. She is especially interested in the intersection of professional and popular knowledge of architecture and landscapes and how these articulations have contributed to city-making and the shaping of collective aspirations of citizens.

Chu's first book, Colonial Urban Development in Hong Kong: Speculative Housing and Segregation in the City (Planning, History and Environment Series, Routledge, spring 2020), traces a spatial history of Hong Kong through the lens of speculative housing practices. Her edited book, The Speculative City: Emergent Forms and Norms of the Built Environment (University of Toronto Press, Spring 2020), explores the spatial and material processes of speculative urbanization in cities around the world. Her current research projects include an investigation of the cultural history of modern parks and recreational landscapes in China, as well as a comparative study of conservation practices in Asia that have given rise to new interpretations of colonial heritage and histories.

Chu is a co-founder and current president of the Hong Kong Chapter of DOCOMOMO (International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites, and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement), an international organization with a mission to promote public knowledge of modern architecture, landscapes and urbanism. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), a scholarly association concerned with the study of vernacular and popular built environments across the world. She is a current member of the Editorial Boards of Journal of Urban History, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and Journal for the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong.