Previously he was chair of comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong and also co-director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures.
His research interests include globalization, Hong Kong and Chinese culture, architecture, cinema, postcolonialism, and critical theory.
His book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1997.
[1] He previously served as a Contributing Editor to Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
[2] Born in 1947, Abbas was raised in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong to a family of Indian, Malaysian, and Chinese descent.