He obtained his Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and has held fellowships at CASVA in Washington, D.C, and the Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Studies at UCLA. Chua has published widely on modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, including essays on animality in nineteenth-century Singapore, 1950s Nanyang painting, Simryn Gill, Ho Tzu Nyen, Donna Ong, and the Migrant Ecologies Project.