Hannah Soong is Associate Professor of Education Futures at the University of South Australia. She is also a  sociologist in education with a great research interest in understanding the lived experiences of children and young people in transnational contexts (eg. international students, refugee and migrant students and families) and education professionals (eg. international pre-service teachers and school teachers teaching in local and international schools). Her work has attracted a total research income of over $500, 000 dollars and has been published into over 50 articles and books. Most of her publications are framed around developing ethical engagement with global shifts and relations in education and wellbeing.Her current research on international students' housing issues, community engagement and everyday wellbeing has attracted national and international attention. Together with Associate Professor Michael Mu, their work have been featured in major media outlets such as ABC news, SBS news, Times Higher Education, University World News, European Association of International Education, and many others. She hopes her interdisciplinary work can contribute to policy enactment of international education and migration nexus within Australia and beyond. 
Born and raised in Singapore, she completed her primary, secondary, and teacher education locally. After teaching in Singapore schools for ten years, she pursued a Bachelor of Education at the University of South Australia, graduating with First Class Honours. Her first academic appointment at the University of South Australia allowed her to contribute her skills, experience, and research to strengthening the teaching–research nexus of developing individual students to be globally-minded and interculturally-sensitive. This is particularly important as education-driven migration becomes an increasingly prominent form of human and social mobility, highlighting the significant potential of education to transform individuals into global citizens.
Between 2011 and 2014, she held external leadership roles as Managing Editor of Social Identities: Journal of Race, Nation and Identities and African Identities, where she also served as Book Review Editor. She currently sits on two editorial boards: as a Board Member of Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, launched in 2016, and since 2019, as Advisory Subject Area Editor for International Education: Journal of Global Education and Research. Between 2022 and 2023, she represented a cohort of Early-Career Researchers in Education Futures, an experience that has since challenged her to cultivate an ethos of care with, for, and within academia as a fellow colleague. She currently leads and convenes two national academic communities—one focused on fostering leadership among Asian academics, and the other on exploring the role of faith in academia—both of which meet monthly online. In addition to these commitments, she facilitates weekly ‘Writing Together’ sessions as a community of practice to support her research students and early-career academics.
In 2015, Dr Soong won an Endeavour Fellowship by Australian Government to examine the phenomenon of student-migrant mobility in Singapore. In the same year, she was offered the Early Career Researcher award by the Australian Association for Research in Education and New Zealand Association for Research in Education International Conference, for her paper on 'international student mobility'. Beyond academia, Hannah is a proud mother of two children.
She welcomes any HDR enquiries in the areas of interest.
The following are some highlights of her funded research projects:

2021-2025 Australian Research Council, Discovery Project, Parent involvement goes online: New ecologies of school-home relations, wth Nichols, S., Dooley, K. and Neumann, M.
2020-2022 New Colombo Mobility Plan, Lead Investigator, Singapore International Placement, with Nguyen, R., Caldwell, D., Lucas, B.
2019-2021 Channel 7: Children Research Foundation, Role of refugee parental aspiration on their children's academic outcomes, Lead Investigator, with Wrench, A., Radford, D., Nguyen, R. and Lucas, B.
2016 Office of Learning and Teaching Extension Grant, Chief Investigator. Celebrating Cultural Diversity Practicum Preparatory Program: Enhancing Better Learning Outcomes for International Pre-Service Teachers undertaking Teaching Practicum in Western Contexts, with Geer, R., Lucas, B., Baynes, M-M., Whitington, V., Nguyen, R.
2015-16- Endeavour Cheung Kong Fellowship, Sole Chief Investigator. Learning and Living in Cosmopolitan Asia: A Case Study of Student-Migrants in Singapore
2015 - Division Research Performance Fund. Chief Investigator. Chief Investigator. Asia Literacy in a South Australian school: A Pilot Case-Study, with Restall., G. and Caldwell, D., Caminos, N.
2015 - International Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding Centre. Sole Chief Investigator Understanding Muslim background students’ aspiration., anticipation and imagination for a better future in Australia: A Pilot Case-Study of one Catholic school in South Australia.
2015-16 - Division Research Performance Fund. Chief Investigator. Disrupting Deficit Narratives of Refugee students: Processes of being, becoming, and belonging,with Wrench, A., Paige, K., Lucas, B., Caldwell, G.