Recent Past FASS Visiting Research Fellows
Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship 2017-2024
Professor Cecilia Cheng
Cecilia Cheng is a professor of Psychology at the University of Hong Kong specialising in the fields of health, cross-cultural, social, and cyber-psychology. She is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and has received prestigious accolades, including the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. She also holds leadership positions such as the Director-at-large of the International Council of Psychologists and serves as an Associate Editor for renowned journals such as Health Psychology Review. At the University of Hong Kong, she held the position of Associate Dean (Postgraduate Education) in the Faculty of Social Sciences and currently serves as the Associate Dean (Personal Development) in the Graduate School.
Prof Cheng visited the Department of Psychology from 1 to 7 November 2023. During her visit, she established a productive collaboration with A/P Mike Cheung, propelling a joint research project on cultural differences in coping flexibility towards advancements in the field and publications in top journals. Prof Cheng also gave a seminar tailored to early-career faculty members and graduate students from the department. The seminar imparted valuable insights, best practices, and practical strategies for establishing a distinguished reputation in a research area, excelling in research, and gaining international recognition, empowering participants with the knowledge and skills required to navigate the academic publishing landscape and establish international collaborations effectively.
Professor Yujin Nagasawa
Yujin Nagasawa is the H. G. Wood Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham. From 2020 to 2023, he led the Global Philosophy of Religion Project, a $2.42 million research initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Dynamic Investment Fund (DIF) at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of many books, including Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Miracles: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), and the forthcoming The Problem of Evil for Atheists (Oxford University Press).
Prof Nagasawa visited the Department of Philosophy from 14 to 18 August 2023. During his visited, he delivered two research presentations: ‘The Problem of Evil for Axiarchism’ and ‘Evil and the Problem of Impermanence’. He also discussed with A/P Ben Blumson a funding application focused on the philosophy of religion, targeting the John Templeton Foundation.
Professor Aris Ananta
Aris Ananta is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia and Visiting Professor at Centre for Advanced Research, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He was President of the Asian Population Association from 2019-2021 and is currently a member (as the intermediate president) of the sixth Asian Population Association Council. His current research interests include economics of population ageing, economics of population mobility, welfare, and ethnicity.
Prof Ananta visited the Department of Sociology and Anthropology from 8 to 23 May 2023. During his visit, he met with A/P Feng Qiushi to discuss the MOE Tier 2 project ‘Analyses and Projections of Households and Living Arrangements in Six ASEAN Countries (HOUSEHOLD-ASEAN)’, in which he is the country PI for Indonesia (with A/P Feng as project PI).
Professor Jie He
Jie He is a professor at the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences at Zhejiang University, P.R. China. Her research focuses on children’s temperament and their social and emotional development and has been published in various esteemed journals, including Child Development, Developmental Science, and Developmental Psychology.
Prof He visited the Department of Psychology from 16 to 22 February 2024. During the visit, Prof He delivered two presentations: ‘The Influence of Early Temperament on Children’s Social Adjustment: A Longitudinal Study’ during the departmental brown bag seminar, and ‘The Influence of Early Temperament on Children’s Social Adjustment – The Mechanism of Self and Other Cognition’ during the Child Development Lab’s meeting. In addition, Dr He engaged with the lab’s graduate students and research assistant, where they delved into the findings of these ongoing projects as well as possible avenues for further exploration. She also met with Dr Lee Hae Yeon to discuss potential projects about children’s temperament.
Dr Farabi Fakih
Farabi Fakih is the head of the Master Program at the History Department, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He has published a monograph with Brill titled Authoritarian Modernization in Indonesia’s Early Independence Period, 1950-1965. He is currently developing a book project which explores the history of the Indonesian petroleum industry.
Dr Fakih visited the Department of History from 18 February to 1 March 2024. During his visit, he delivered a lecture titled ‘The ‘Djambi scandal’ and natural resource governance: Oil and state formation in Indonesian history’ with Dr Faizah Zakaria as discussant. He also chaired a research forum titled ‘How to navigate Indonesia’s new research permit application process under BRIN’ with Dr Lilis Mulyani (BRIN), Dr Erica Larson, and Dr Seng Guo Quan. In addition, Dr Fakih developed a joint publication with co-editor Dr Seng and Dr Faizah Zakaria on Southeast Asian capitalism.
Associate Professor Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham is an associate professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on migration, foreign investment, and the relationship between economics and military conflict. He also conducts research on powersharing, unrecognized states, and the enforcement of human rights through quasi-judicial bodies at the World Bank. He is a co-founder and PI in the Security and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab, and a co-creator of the World Economics and Politics Dataverse. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Quarterly, among other outlets.
A/P Graham visited the Department of Political Science from 17 to 31 July 2023. During his visit, he worked alongside A/P Sooyeon Kim and Dr Faisal Bin Yahya on the ASEAN Firm Survey. This project examines firm strategy and the effects of government policy across a range of topic areas (automation, digital commerce, the environment, global value chains) across seven countries in the ASEAN region. The survey is funded by a Ministry of Education Tier 2 grant, with additional personnel time funded by the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California.
Professor Anthony Pym
Anthony Pym is Distinguished Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain, Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and Honorary Professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. He served as President of the European Society for Translation Studies from 2010 to 2016. With some 28 authored, co-authored, or edited books and more than 240 articles, his expertise spans various fields in the study of translation and intercultural communication. Prof Pym visited the Department of Chinese Studies from 11 to 30 January 2024. During his visit, he presented a hybrid seminar on ‘Ruses of Trust – On the Use of Translation Technologies for High-Stakes Messaging’. Among other research activities, he collaborated with Dr Bei Hu (PI) and A/P Han Chao (Co-PI) on refining research design and methodologies for the Tier 1 project ‘Using AI-Assisted Translation Technologies to Facilitate Crisis Communication: Developing a Translation Triage System in Singapore’, where he serves as an International Collaborator.
Associate Professor Nachiket Chanchani
Dr Nachiket Chanchani is Associate Professor at the Department of History of Art at the University of Michigan. He studies South Asian and Himalayan art, architecture, and visual culture. He has authored three books – Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas (2019), Amaruśataka and the Lives of Indian Love Poems (2022), and India’s Composite Heritage (2022), many journal articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces in published in leading newspapers, and has been involved with curatorial projects at numerous museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Art Institute of Chicago, and Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Mumbai. A/P Chanchani visited the Department of History from 1 to 30 November 2022. During the visit, he completed researching and writing a substantial essay entitled, “In the Skin of Trees: Escape and Healing in Cambodia”, delivered a talk on the subject at the National Gallery of Singapore, and thereafter submitted a manuscript for publication. He also conceptualized and led – in close cooperation with Dr Priya M. Jaradi, NUS Museum and Asian Civilizations Museum – an intensive three-day curatorial training program.
Professor Thomas Stodulka
Dr Thomas Stodulka is Junior Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Psychological Anthropology and Head of Department at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include the following: Affect and Emotion; Alternative Education, Economy, and Environment; Childhood and Youth; Ethnographic Methods; Marginalization, Stigmatization, and Mental Health; Psychological Anthropology; Social Inequalities and Mobilities; Travelling Concepts and Translocal Connectivities. His ongoing research projects include studies on permaculture and learning and shaping futures in Southeast Asia. He visited the Department of Sociology & Anthropology from 13 February to 2 March 2023. During the visit, he co-organised a 2-day workshop on ‘Embodied, Emotional and Sensorial Knowledge: Perspectives’ with A/P Kelvin Low and prepared two special issues at high-impact journals arising from the above workshop. He also delivered a professional development session for graduate students on book publishing, and a public talk at the department seminar series, titled ‘The Liberation Pedagogies of Ecosocial Movements: Shaping Futures in Timor-Leste’s Permaculture Youth Camps’.
Professor Hiroyuki Akitani
Prof Hiroyuki Akitani is Professor at the Department of Humanities at the Faculty of Law and Letters at Ehime University. He studies Chinese Dialectology and has carried out extensive linguistic fieldwork and collected large amounts of data on dozens of Chinese dialects. Prof Akitani has published eight authored and three co-authored books, particularly covering the phonological and lexical history of Chinese dialects. He visited the Department of Chinese Studies from 29 January to 27 February 2023. During the visit, Prof Akitani and Dr Shen Ruiqing carried out a research project titled ‘The origin of East-West division in Fujian: Explaining lexical difference between Coastal Min and Inland Min’, and drafted three co-authored papers. He also gave a seminar titled ‘On the origin of East-West lexical division of Min.
Dr Bahia Guellai
Dr Bahia Guellai is Lecturer at the Department of Psychology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. Her work involves investigating social, cognitive and emotional processing in human-robot interactions in children and adults. Dr Guellai is currently a co-investigator on the CNRS@CREATE DesCartes grant looking at the ethics of autonomy and care in smart cities and machines. She visited the Department of Psychology from 2 to 28 February 2023. During the visit, Dr Guellai delivered a brown bag seminar to the department and gave a presentation to the Area Journal Club. With Dr Nina Powell, she also completed a review paper on human-robot interactions (focused on children-social robots interactions), and started preparing a follow-up grant application.
Professor Virginia Slaughter
Dr Virginia Slaughter is Professor and Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she founded the Early Cognitive Development Centre. Her research focuses on social and cognitive development in infants and young children. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
Prof Slaughter virtually visited the Department of Psychology from 14 to 24 February 2022. On 14 February she met with A/P Winston Goh (Head, Psychology). This was followed by a meeting with Dr Ding Xiaopan (Host, Assistant Professor at Department of Psychology, NUS) and her graduate students. On 15 February Prof Slaughter gave a talk titled “Do human imitate from birth”. On 21 February Prof Slaughter met with Prof Setoh Peipei from NTU Psychology. On 23 February Prof Slaughter met graduate students from the NUS Child Development Lab, who presented their original research. Discussions centered on extensions of the students’ work and potential collaborations. Finally, on 24 February Prof Slaughter and her post-doc Dr Aisling Mulvihill met with Dr Ding Xiaopan and former research assistant Cleo Tay about developing new cross-cultural projects.
Associate Professor Bahar Gursel
Dr Bahar Gursel is Associate Professor at the Department of History of Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey). Her areas of interest include social and cultural history of the United States and Europe, nineteenth-century children’s literature, ephemera studies, visual culture, and the representation of the East in the West. “Opening the Chrysalis: Willard D. Straight’s Sketches, Photographs, and Accounts of Korea’s Interaction with the Outside World, 1904–5” in New Global Studies (2021) and “Flora J. Cooke’s Tree Stories: Progressive Education and Nature in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century United States” in Carmen Concilio and Daniela Fargione, eds. Trees in Literature and the Arts: Human Arboreal Perspectives in the Anthropocene (Lanham: Lexington Books – Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) are among her latest publications. She has also participated in the curatorial teams of exhibitions that concentrate on photography archives and related primary sources.
During her virtual visit to the Department of Malay Studies from 14 February to 1 March 2022, she had the opportunity to collaborate with A/P Maznah Binti Mohamad and Dr Suriani Suratman on a curated exhibition and an academic manuscript that are going to focus on the visual depiction of women and gender in the Malay world. Within that scope, they also discussed a number of pertinent applications for funding sources for the follow-up project. With exhibition collaborators, she had the chance to hold meetings regarding the planning and organization of the aforementioned exhibition. On 22 February 2022, she delivered a seminar titled “Maud Wood Park and Southeast Asian Women: Photographs from and American Suffragist’s Reports, 1909-1910.” She also had the opportunity to attend A/P Maznah Mohamad’s online class (“Gender in Southeast Asia”), and presented a talk on Maud Wood Park.
Professor Brendan K. Beare
Dr Brendan K. Beare is a Professor of Econometrics at the University of Sydney, a position he has held since July 2019. He previously held the positions of Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, and Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. His published research spans a range of topics in econometrics and finance, including dependence modeling with copulae, statistical inference with concavity constraints, option price anomalies, functional cointegration, and generative mechanisms for power laws.
During his virtual visit to the Department of Economics from 1 to 21 February, he worked on a project with the working title Stochastic Arbitrage with Market Index Options. The project is a collaboration with Juwon Seo at NUS and Larry Schmidt at MIT, and is supported by research assistance from Zhongxi Zheng, an incoming PhD student at NUS.
Professor Costica Bradatan
Dr Costica Bradatan is Professor of Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, USA, and an Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at University of Queensland, Australia. He has also held faculty appointments at Cornell University, Miami University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Notre Dame, as well as at universities in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He is the author and editor or co-editor of more than ten books, among which are Dying for Ideas. The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (2015) and In Praise of Failure (2023). His work has been translated into more than twenty languages, including Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Farsi. I also write book reviews, essays, and op-ed pieces for such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, TLS, Literary Review, Aeon, and Commonweal. He is the philosophy/religion editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
During his virtual visit to the Department of English Language and Literature from 8 to 28 January 2022, he gave two virtual lectures: “On the Social Predestination of Failure,” in the Department of Philosophy, on 17 February, and “Against Conformity,” in the Department of English Language and Literature, on 23 February. While holding this virtual fellowship, he kept working on his book, In Praise of Failure. Four Lessons in Humility, to come out later in 2022.
Professor Zachary Zimmer
Dr Zachary Zimmer is Professor of Family Studies and Gerontology, Canada Research Chair in Global Aging and Community, and Director of the Global Aging and Community Initiative at Mount Saint Vincent University in Canada. He studies an eclectic range of topics that apply a global demographic perspective to concerns of health and wellness of older persons. Recent research projects include investigating religiosity and spirituality among older adults worldwide, looking at the effects of early-life wartime trauma on later-life health, investigating trends in chronic pain, and studying intergenerational relationships in societies undergoing rapid socio-demographic change.
During his virtual visit to the Department of Sociology and the Centre for Family and Population Research from 8 to 28 January 2022, he consulted on and worked on a manuscript examining the links between war exposure among older Vietnamese and raspatory health in collaboration with A/P Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan. He also prepared and delivered a public lecture jointly organized by NUS Department of Sociology and Centre for Family and Population Research, entitled “Early-Life War Exposure and Later-Life Frailty Among Older Adults in Vietnam: Does War Hasten Aging?”.
Associate Professor Crystal Abidin
Dr Crystal Abidin is an internationally renowned socio-cultural anthropologist of influencer cultures, online visibility, and social media pop cultures. She has won grants from the ARC, Facebook, Handelsrådet, ICRC, and SSRC, and her scholarship has been featured in the international press of 27 countries. For her public scholarship and engagement with the media and community, Crystal was named an ABC TOP 5 Humanities Fellow (2020), listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (2018) and Pacific Standard 30 Top Thinkers Under 30 (2016), and awarded the ICA Pop Comm Early Career Scholar Prize (2020). She is Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow of Internet Studies at Curtin University, DECRA Fellow with the Australian Research Council, Programme Lead of Social Media Pop Cultures at the Centre for Culture and Technology, and Founder of the TikTok Cultures Research Network.
A/P Abidin visited the Department of Communications and New Media virtually from 2 to 19 November 2021. She conducted a public research seminar that was a key feature of The Media Conversation (https://www.mediacorp.sg/en/tmc), a 2-day event that the department organised in collaboration with Mediacorp. Due to schedule conflicts with Mediacorp, her talk was conducted on 9 December.
On 12 November, she also conducted a 1.5hr methodological masterclass for research students on researching social media pop cultures and TikTok, which took the form of a brief lecture, a mini workshop and a discussion session. The department also hosted a 1-hr lunchtime dialogue with A/P Abidin on 19 November, where she spoke about creating visibility and impacts of her research beyond academia. The discussion focused on engagements and partnerships with the tech industry, governments, and civil society, and A/P Abidin shared tips on creating public-friendly portfolios to communicate research, and strategies for building sustainable and impactful collaborations. She also worked on a journal special issue, and together with Dr Natalie Pang, developed/drafted outlines for publications to be submitted in 2022.
Associate Professor Subhasish M. Chowdhury
Subhasish M. Chowdhury is a Reader (Associate Professor) of Economics at the University of Bath, UK. His areas of research interest cover both theoretical and applied investigations of problems in Conflict, Industrial Economics, Behavioral Economics, and Political Economy. Subhasish has been the recipient of the British Academy Rising Star award in 2017. He is a Co-Editor of ‘Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy’ and is in the editorial board in ‘Studies in Microeconomics’. He has also served as a guest-editor for ‘Economic Inquiry’ and the ‘Journal of Economics Psychology’.
Assoc Prof Chowdhury visited the Department of Economics virtually from 4 to 17 December 2021. He delivered a one-hour lecture titled ‘The Economics of Identity and Conflict’ to the graduate students on 10 December. He also delivered a 75-minute seminar on 15 December. The seminar consisted of two research papers titled ‘Stuck in the Middle of Enforcement: (Sub-)Optimal Deterrence of Workplace Sabotage’, and ‘The Attack-and-Defense Conflict with the Gun-and-Butter Dilemma’, respectively. During the visit, he discussed the possible opportunities of joint research activities beyond research projects such as event organization and funding applications.
Dr David Pietz
Dr David Pietz is Professor of Chinese History in the Department of History, and Director of the Global Studies Program at the University of Arizona. He also holds the UNESCO Chair in Environmental History.
Prof Pietz’s research on the environmental history of modern China has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton).
Prof Pietz visited the Department of History from 7 to 21 September 2019. During his visit, he carried out research on a project titled “Death and Life on the Yangtze: Extinction, Conservation, and Environmental Change in Modern China”, presented a departmental seminar on it, and worked on collaborations between his home department and the Department of History at NUS.
Dr Clio Andris
Dr Clio Andris is Assistant Professor at the Geography Department, Penn State University. She studies interpersonal relationships in geographic space from the scale of a coffee shop conversation to the scale of global flight networks. Dr Andris’ background is in GIS, cultural studies and urban planning, and her research has uncovered how to put social networks in a GISystem for analysis, how to measure romantic/interpersonal relationships within the built environment, and how relationships start in the mind and then build to contribute to worldwide connectivity.
Applications include travel and census in Singapore, telecom data in the UK, Singapore and Cote d’Ivoire, NCAA Athletics, Facebook, confection consumption (sponsored by The Hershey Company), AirBNB, The Yellow Pages, Yelp, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the U.S. Congress, Penn State Alumni, and romantic relationships in State College. Her largest project is the Neighborhood Connectivity Survey, a 20,000-household mailing sponsored by the Knight Foundation. The NCS surveys for patterns on telecommunications, migration and travel, as well as trends in access to social support. The goal of this project is to measure social resilience by highlighting neighborhoods with strong social and spatial ties.
Dr Andris visited the Department of Geography from 27 May to 6 June 2019. During her visit, she presented a seminar titled “Five Methods for the Geographic Representation of Interpersonal Relationships and Social Life”, helped set up a research collaboration with a team of NUS faculty to put in a seed grant proposal for a project called ‘Social Asset Mapping for Communities: A Quantitative Approach’, and worked on two additional research projects.
Dr Sascha Auerbach
Dr Sascha Auerbach is a Lecturer in Modern British and Colonial History at the University of Nottingham. He specializes in legal culture and the history of race and immigration in London and the British Empire in the late nineteenth century. His first monograph, Race, Law, and “the Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain, was published in 2009. He has recently completed his second book manuscript, which examines the social and cultural dynamics of local courtrooms in nineteenth-century London. Dr. Auerbach’s research has appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including the Journal of Social History, Law and History Review, the Journal of British Studies, and Comparative Studies in Society and History. His current project is an historical re-assessment of Indian and Chinese indentured labour in the nineteenth-century British Empire. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a former Fulbright—King’s College London Scholar (Law).
Dr Auerbach visited the Department of History from 9 to 22 February 2019. During his visit, he conducted archival research in the National Library of Singapore, pertinent to his current project on Indian and Chinese indentured labour in the nineteenth century. The materials collected were vital for a planned third monograph, tentatively titled Men Sold Like Pigs, and for a major research article on indenture, race, and the state in the nineteenth-century British Empire. He also met with NUS staff to discuss possible collaborative funding bids. Lastly, he completed several key writing projects, including two major research articles, a co-authored theory article, and a book review.
Dr Neil McLatchie
Dr Neil McLatchie is a lecturer at Lancaster University. He co-founded their open science group (PROSPR) and is a co-director of the Moral Cognition and Behaviour Lab. His research interests focus on the social functions of moral emotions, including the adaptive value of guilt-motivated behaviours, and the challenges of expressing pride in one’s own moral achievements (representative papers include: Piazza, McLatchie & Olesen, 2018; McLatchie & Piazza, 2017; McLatchie, Giner-Sorolla & Derbyshire, 2016). Additionally, he has published work on statistical inference, such as reasons why Psychologists can benefit from using Bayesian analyses (Dienes & McLatchie, 2018), and different ways of quantifying evidence for the null hypothesis (Lakens, McLatchie, Scheel, Isager & Dienes, 2018).
Dr McLatchie visited the Department of Psychology from 13 to 24 August 2018. He gave a research presentation on the use of Bayes factors in Psychological research and met with faculty members and graduate students. He also was involved in a number of studies, one of which is investigating the role of guilt-motivated self-punishment.
Associate Professor Fiona McConnell
Dr Fiona McConnell is a human geographer at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. Her research focuses on issues around sovereignty, legitimacy, and diplomacy with a particular interest in communities officially excluded from formal state politics. In 2017, she held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for a project titled, “Representing the unrepresented: the politics and practices of subaltern diplomacy.” She is the author of Rehearsing the State: the Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), co-editor of Geographies of Peace (IB Tauris, 2013), and Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics (Routledge, 2016).
Dr McConnell visited the Department of Geography from 4 to 10 March 2018. She led a discussion and presented a seminar on how different modes of politics are being articulated and performed by minority communities within the spaces of the United Nations Office at Geneva. She is also collaborating on a project on the geopolitical and geoeconomic dimensions of China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’.
Professor Joe P. McDermott
Dr Joe P. McDermott is Emeritus Reader in Chinese History and Fellow of St. John’s College at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has a broad interest in Chinese social, economic, and cultural history, mainly during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties (1000-1700). At times he has researched the art history and book history of these periods, but has usually focused on the social and economic history of China, initially in rural areas but in recent years more and more on the commercial and financial institutions of late imperial China. This recent interest derives from his study of the exceptionally rich historical records of the Huizhou area of southern Anhui Province, the home of south China’s richest merchants during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Dr McDermott visited the Department of History from 1 to 15 February 2018. He held a graduate student seminar and presented a lecture on the history of Chinese commercial partnerships from the eleventh to the eighteenth century, where he explained how in line with Chinese commercial development different forms of commercial contract logically evolved from one into another, leading eventually in south China to the preponderance of joint-share partnerships as south China’s merchants major means of collecting capital and organizing their joint commercial ventures. Dr McDermott also worked with Dr Wang Jinping on studying regional merchant groups in late imperial China.
Professor Haig Patapan
Dr Haig Patapan is the Director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy and Professor in the School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University. His research interests are in democratic theory and practice, political philosophy, political leadership and comparative constitutionalism. Professor Patapan has published in the foremost politics, political theory, public policy, and law journals. His books include Judging Democracy (2000), an examination of judicial politics, jurisprudence and constitutionalism; Machiavelli in Love (2007), a theoretical enquiry into the origins of modern political thought; and a series of co-edited books exploring the changing nature of legitimacy, law and leadership, especially in Asia: Globalisation and Equality (2004); Westminster Legacies (2005); Dissident Democrats (2008); Political Legitimacy in Asia (2011).
In his recent work Dr Patapan examines the nature of leadership and judgment in democracies, a theme he has explored in the co-authored book The Democratic Leader (OUP, 2012) as well as the co-edited collections Dispersed Democratic Leadership (OUP, 2009) and Good Democratic Leadership (OUP, 2014). He visited the Department of Political Science from 13 to 23 August 2017. Dr Patapan presented his paper, ‘On Modern Patriotisms’, co-taught two lectures of the module Democratic Theory, and worked with faculty members on a symposium proposal.
Professor Shannon A. Brown
Dr Shannon A. Brown teaches history at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces/Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy. Before joining the faculty, Dr Brown worked in Washington, D.C. as a contract historian and defense analyst for a number of years with clients such as the US Air Force, US Treasury, US Census Bureau, and a variety of private organizations and companies, among them the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the Tokyo Electric Power Company. He is the editor of Providing the Means of War: Historical Perspectives on Defense Acquisition, 1945-2000 (US Army Center of Military History, 2005) and Resourcing Stability Operations and Reconstruction: Past, Present, and Future (Eisenhower National Security Series Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 2006), and several articles on technology and military subjects.
Dr Brown visited the Department of History from 6 to 23 July 2017. He worked with scholars on a project that will produce an edited book, Chasing Dragons. Chasing Dragons explores alternative approaches to understanding Western grand strategy in greater Asia between 1895 and 1975.
Professor Jin Seo Cho
Dr Jin Seo Cho is based at Yonsei University’s School of Economics and is currently a Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests are econometric theory, applied econometrics, and time series analysis. He is also a member of Economic Expert Panel at the Korea Development Institute and Editor-in-Chief of The Korean Journal of Economics.
Dr Cho visited the Department of Economics from 4 to 30 July 2017. He presented a paper titled ‘Directionally Econometric Models’, held discussions on econometrics with faculty members, and collaborated on research papers. A working paper titled ‘Parametric Inference on the Mean of Functional Data’ and other material on econometric methodology were produced.
Professor Claudio Minca
Dr Claudio Minca is Head of the Department of Geography and Planning at Macquarie University in Australia. His current research centres on the spatialisation of (bio)politics; tourism and travel theories of modernity; and the relationship between modern knowledge, space and landscape in postcolonial geography. His most recent books are On Schmitt and Space (2015, with R. Rowan), Hitler’s Geographies (2016, with P. Giaccaria), Moroccan Dreams (2016, with L. Wagner), and After Heritage (2018, with H. Muzaini).
Dr Minca visited the Department of Geography from 23 February to 12 March 2017. He gave a seminar titled ‘Geographies of the Camp’, a research seminar, ‘The Biopolitical Imperative’, led writing workshops and met graduate students and faculty.
Professor Joshua John Clarkson
Dr Joshua John Clarkson holds PhDs in Social Psychology and in Marketing and is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Carl H. Lindner School of Business at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. A consumer psychologist who specializes in the areas of persuasion, self-control, and expertise, his research has been published in various journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and his findings have been featured in media outlets from business magazines and news articles to pop-psychology books and edited academic volumes.
Dr Clarkson visited the Department of Psychology from 1 to 15 July 2017, and collaborated on a review paper on the role of expectations in guiding the allocation of resources during self-control, as well as developing a construct called ‘attitude attainability’. In addition, he discussed his research with students and faculty members, and spoke with Dr Michelle See on a possible collaboration focusing on their shared interest in attitude bases.
Dr Anna Przybylska
Head of the Centre for Deliberation at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Dr Anna Przbylska studied social sciences with the scope of sociology and social policy at the University of Warsaw and of media and communication at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Internet i komunikowanie we wspólnocie lokalnej (The Internet and Communication in Local Communities), 2010, and the co-editor of Deliberation and Democracy: Innovative Processes and Institutions (with Stephen Coleman and Yves Sintomer), 2015. Dr Przybylska visited the Department of Communications and New Media from 5 to 19 June 2017, where she assisted in the organization of an international conference on Deliberation and Decision Making (DDM 2017), co-edited a journal special issue, held a research sharing session, conducted a literature review, and planned future research collaboration with A/P Zhang Weiyu.
Professor Jens Leth Hougard
Dr Jens Leth Hougard, Professor in Applied Microeconomics at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, visited the Department of Economics from 21 February to 4 March 2017. During his visit, he finished a paper, taught a 1-day mini course titled “An Introduction to Allocation Rules”, and gave a seminar presentation titled “A Welfare Economic Interpretation of FRAND”.
Associate Professor David Lefkowitz
Dr David Lefkowitz is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law (PPEL) at the University of Richmond, Virginia. His areas of expertise are political philosophy, philosophy of law, ethical theory, and applied ethics. Dr Lefkowitz visited the Department of Political Science from 14 to 23 February 2017, where he presented a paper at the Singapore Symposium in Legal Theory, as well as at the Global Rule of Law workshop, and met with faculty and graduate students.
Professor Susan Bayly
Dr Susan Bayly is Professor of Historical Anthropology, Director of Graduate Studies, and Chair of the PhD Committee for the Division of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests are the study of modernity and achievement; globalisation; theories of historical change; the disciplinary interface between history and anthropology; and colonialism and its cultural afterlife. She visited the South Asian Studies Programme from 20 February to 5 March 2017 where she delivered a public lecture entitled “Images and the Moral Citizen in Late-Socialist Vietnam”, taught a Masterclass for FASS graduate students entitled “Colonialism/Postcolonialism: Reflections and Perspectives – India, Vietnam, and Beyond”, and met with students and faculty members.
Professor Hon Chan
Dr Hon Chan is Professor of Public Policy and Administration at City University, Hong Kong. His major teaching and research interests cover public sector personnel management, performance measurement, civil service reforms, comparative institutional and policy capacity studies and environmental policies. He visited the Department of Political Science from 28 February to 10 March 2017, where he gave a public seminar entitled “The Three Approaches to China’s Civil Service Reform: The Reformers’ Views”, delivered a guest lecture on civil service reform to an undergraduate honours module, and met with faculty members.
Professor Jeffrey Richey
Professor from the School of Oceanography, University of Washington, WA, Dr Jeffrey Richey’s main expertise is on carbon cycles in rivers, especially in the Amazon and Mekong. He is also a visiting professor at the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dr Richey is a renowned scholar in the field of biochemical cycles in large river systems. He has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science, and Nature Geoscience. Dr Richey visited the Department of Geography from 14 to 28 January 2017. During his visit, he gave a departmental seminar titled “Net Ecosystem Exchange of the Lower Amazon River: From Land to the Ocean and Atmosphere”, became a PhD dissertation examiner for one of the department’s graduate students, gave a guest lecture titled “Hydro-geomorphic and biochemical changes/issues from mountains to oceans: an example of the Amazon river” to an undergraduate honours module, and met with faculty members.