Professor Lily Kong was appointed President of Singapore Management University in 2019, the first Singaporean to lead the institution and the first woman to head any university in Singapore. Professor Kong also holds the Lee Kong Chian Chair Professorship of Social Sciences. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and is widely known for her research on urban transformations, and social and cultural change in Asian cities.
An award-winning researcher and teacher, Professor Kong has received numerous international awards and accolades, including the British Academy Fellowship, Commonwealth Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, Geographical Society of China Fellowship, Robert Stoddard Award from the Association of American Geographers, and the Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), and the SR Nathan Fellowship. She is consistently ranked in the top 1-2% in her field in studies by Stanford. She has also been conferred an Honorary Degree by Loughborough University.