Researchers
These established Postdoctoral Fellows, Research Associates and Research Assistants are involved in multiple interdisciplinary projects. The Centre often hires Research Assistants to provide support for our ongoing research projects. Expressions of Interest (with résumé attached) can be emailed under the subject heading “Casual Work”.
Current Researchers
Research Associate
Renuka Mahadevan is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland, one of Australia’s top 8 universities. She is also a cultural economist with expertise in the social and economic valuation of arts festivals, events and the museum. She uses economic modelling to undertake empirical evidence based policy analysis and evaluation.
Her commentary on Arts Festivals in Singapore was sought and published on ChannelNews Asia on 28 Jan 2018.
I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies in Asia at the National University of Singapore. My dissertation explores the role of algorithms in theorising new ways of studying visual culture. Bridging perspectives from data culture and feminist theories, my research aims to discuss the role of algorithms in narrating a visuality of Muslim women. I am also a visual artist and writer whose practice engages with aspects of image-making, visual and sentient embodiment, feminisms, and the intersections between them. My current research project, Women in War, is a survey of women in war images critiqued through concepts of gender and violence, politics of the visual, and the roles of algorithm and archives as methods. These have manifested as Phase 1: Textualize (2016) and Phase 3: Performative (2019), exhibited at The Substation and Objectifs. As part of my practice, I have exhibited the visual projects Hijab/Her (2012), Untitled (2011), and Sufi and the Bearded Man (2010); designed and facilitated workshops with AWARE, Objectifs, The Substation, and the NUS Museum; and is part of the collective Bras Basah Open. In my free time, I love smelling old books and building on her collection of books and plant babies. I hope to adopt a kitty someday.
Valerie Lim
Social Media Manager
Valerie Lim is a Research Assistant and Social Media Manager at NUS CRC. Her academic journey converges around subjects such as Korean Entertainment, Mental Health Literacy, and Cultural Policy. Accordingly, she also has a thesis titled "Foucauldian Perspectives on Mental Health Literacy in the Korean Entertainment Industry." As of now, she is focused on spicing up CRC's socials by engaging with trends and popular culture.
As of now, she is into all things Chinese, and consumes a ton of content from Little Redbook (Xiaohongshu).
Dr. Wong Hei Ting
Research Associate
Hety Wong Hei Ting is a Research Associate of the Cultural Research Centre. She is a recent PhD graduate of the Cultural Studies in Asia programme at the National University of Singapore. Trained as a vocalist, her research interests in patterned sound combine her practical and academic training. Her dissertation studies modified Cantopop songs in post-1997 Hong Kong with a sound studies perspective in connection to the development of media and sound (re)production technologies. She is currently conducting a pilot study on Teresa Teng's posthumous hologram performances in live concerts and television programs for her post-doc project, in which she searches for the creation of digital realness through the (re-)production of the late celebrities' singing voices.
Dr. Rimi Parvin Khan
Senior Lecturer, Department of Communications and New Media
Rimi Khan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communications and New Media, and convenor of the Masters of Arts (Arts and Cultural Entrepreneurship) at the National University of Singapore. She has published extensively on arts and cultural policy, migrant youth, creative labour and sustainable fashion in Asia. Her book, Art in community: the provisional citizen (2016, Palgrave), explores the institutional and aesthetic agendas that produce ideas of ‘community’. She is currently working on another monograph titled, Fashion for other worlds: economies of aspiration, friction and renewal.
Dr. Soh Kai Ruo
Lecturer, Department of Communications and New Media
Soh Kai Ruo is a Lecturer in the department of Communication and New Media. Her research explores the transnational connections of foreign film collaborations. She holds a PhD in Creative Industries from the University of Wollongong.
Research Associate
Michelle H. S. Ho (pronouns: she, her) is Assistant Professor in the department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore (NUS). She holds a Ph.D. in cultural studies and graduate certificate in women’s and gender studies from Stony Brook University (SUNY).
Her research and teaching focus on affect, gender, sexuality, media, and popular culture in contemporary East Asia.
Past Researchers
Dr. Elizer Jay Y. de los Reyes
Research Fellow
Jay de los Reyes is a Lecturer at the Southampton Education School of the University of Southampton. Born and raised in the villages of the northern Philippines, he draws from his biography in exploring issues involving transnational migration, schooling, labour, and indigeneity. He is currently working on a book project titled Moored Futures: How the Left-Behind Are Aspiring in A Mobile World where he investigates how young people in the villages of the northern Philippines are imagining alternative futures. He is also working on an ethnographic project that combines global ethnography and digital ethnography to examine transnational connections between migrant Filipina domestic workers in Singapore and their left behind families in rural Philippines through the lens of what he calls “global spectating”. Jay’s project hopes to offer a possible way of looking at the “mobile” and the “moored” in non-asymmetrical and covalent terms. He is part of an international team of researchers from Australia and Hong Kong that was recently granted a Universitas 21 Researcher Resilience Fund for their project Reimagining Academic Resilience: Stories We Tell. He holds a PhD from The University of Melbourne and master's degrees in Global Studies and Development Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of the Philippines respectively. He was previously a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service), and New York University-Steinhardt Faculty First-Look Fellowship.
Jo
Research Assistant
Joanne is a creative producer with experience in arts, entertainment and cultural diplomacy. She is an advocate for diversity and participation and has co-developed a number of inclusive arts programmes for disabled and elderly communities.
Dr. Alex Lambert
Research Associate
Alex’s research focuses on social and mobile media and digital ethnography. A book based on this research has been published by Palgrave MacMillan entitled "Intimacy and Friendship on Facebook".
After completing his early career postdoctoral research fellowship for the RUPC, Alex took up a teaching and research lectureship at Monash in the Communication and Media Department in the School of Media, Film and Journalism.
Dr. Rosemary Overell
Research Associate
Rosemary Overell is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at The University of Otago. Her work is inter-disciplinary and explores the affective vicissitudes of contemporary cultural formations at the intersections of gender and sexuality. Her most recent work explored #MeToo in terms of ‘anguish’ and was published in "Theory & Event".
She tweets @muzaken.
Research Associate
Annisa R. Beta is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. She earned her doctoral degree from the National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on youth, social media, and social movements in Southeast Asia.
She has researched and published on the topics of hijabers and young Muslim women’s groups in Indonesia.