Kung Chien Wen

Born and raised in Singapore, I was a History and English double major at Dartmouth College and taught A-Level Southeast Asian History at Raffles Institution before pursuing my Ph.D in Modern Chinese and International and Global History at Columbia University. My research straddles the fields of Chinese migration and diaspora, the Cold War and decolonization in Southeast Asia, and modern China and Taiwan in the world. I was formerly a Visiting Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University of the Pacific and a Postdoctoral Fellow, in this department, for the Ministry of Education-funded project "Reconceptualizing the Cold War: On-the-ground Experiences in Asia."

My first book, Diasporic Cold Warriors, came out with Cornell University Press in March 2022 as part of Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Drawing upon archival research and fieldwork in Taiwan, the Philippines, the United States, and China, it explains how the Philippine Chinese became Southeast Asia's most ardent overseas Chinese supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) from the 1950s to 1970s. I have also published articles in Modern Asian Studies, the International History Review, and Asian Ethnicity.

I am the recipient of a five-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship from the Singapore Social Sciences Research Council and, together with Principal Investigator Luke Lu at Nanyang Technological University, a Heritage Research Grant from the National Heritage Board. These grants will go towards research and writing for my second book, Sinospheric Subjects, a history of how social and cultural relations between ordinary Chinese Singaporeans and both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan from the 1970s to the 1990s shaped and were shaped by Singapore's domestic Chinese agenda.