February 22, 2023

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Kung Chien Wen (NUS History) on being awarded the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship for his project Sinospheric Subjects: Chinese Singaporeans, China, and Taiwan, 1976-1990!

In Sinospheric Subjects, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Singapore, Asst Prof Kung seeks to illuminate ordinary Chinese Singaporeans’ relations with the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan during the late 1970s and 1980s. This five-year project explores how Singapore’s domestic Chinese agenda from around 1976 to 1990 shaped and was shaped by cultural and social ties between these Singaporeans and both the PRC and ROC. The study will connect their experiences of the 1980s to the histories of China and Taiwan.

Asst Prof Kung envisions that his research will help historians reimagine Singapore’s recent history within a wider world and from the perspective of persons for whom language and culture facilitated mobility and identity-making beyond borders. He hopes that it will enable the wider public to better understand a generation of Chinese Singaporeans and how their memories and experiences continue to inform their identities and affinities today.