Tan Hong Jun Douglas (Mr)

Proposed Thesis Title: Reading the Personal in the Professional: British Scholar-Officials and the Construction of Imperial Discourse
Advisor: Assistant Professor Kelvin Lawrence

I recently graduated from NUS with a B.A. Honors (Highest Distinction). My research mainly focuses on the private lives and circumstances of historical actors as sources of motivation for their actions. My undergraduate thesis, “Reading the Personal in Imperial Knowledge-Making: Sir William Jones and Walter William Skeat” explored how the personal circumstances of scholar-official types affected the knowledge they produced in service of the British Empire.

Currently, I am working on looking at different shaping influences that affected Imperial servants in their private lives, and the specific ways these influences spilled over into their professional work. My academic of interest include: biography and history, the history of race, intellectual history, and the history of ideas.

In my spare time, I can usually be found drinking black coffee, and/or reading whichever philosophical work holds my attention at the moment.