ROBERT KRAWCZYK
PhD Student
Email: rob.krawczyk@u.nus.edu
Research Title:Assembling Outer Space Narratives: The Popular Geopolitics of Singapore in Space
Research Group: Politics, Economies And Space (PEAS)
Thesis Advisor: Prof James D. Sidaway
Thesis Co-Advisor: Assoc Prof Woon Chih Yuan
As a political geographer, my PhD research, entitled Assembling Outer Space Narratives: The Popular Geopolitics of Singapore in Space, explores the development of outer space narratives in Singapore, as Singapore seeks to accelerate the development of a commercial space industry. The project aims to follow a group of space startups in Singapore’s space industry, exploring how their commercial space narratives materialise in particular environments, and how understandings of a broader ‘geopolitical environment’ background the technological work of assembling space narratives.
The project situates practices of assembling outer space narratives as part of a wider history of embodied space labour in Singapore, such as the work of technicians running Sentosa Earth Station as it broadcast the Apollo XV splashdown in 1971; to the launch of Singapore’s first satellite (ST-1) in 1998 as part of a wider arc of post-Cold War developments in commercial space technology in Asia. The project plans to conduct ethnography (interviews and participant observation) and archival research, and intends to contribute a new case study to the geographies of outer space sub-field within political geography.
Rob holds a BA in Geography from the University of Oxford and MAs in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London, and Politics and International Relations from the Yenching Academy of Peking University. Before NUS, he worked as a Research Assistant at Forensic Architecture and at PwC in London. He is interested in filmmaking and enjoys cycling around Singapore.