FADIAH NADWA BINTI FIKRI

Year of Intake: 2020
Email: fadiahnadwa@u.nus.edu 
Thesis Advisor: Dr Lin Hongxuan

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Fadiah's dissertation examines the construction of Malayness under the Melayu citizenship provision of the 1947 People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya (1947 People’s Constitution), drafted by the PUTERA-AMCJA coalition, Malaya's first left-wing, multi-ethnic united front.

 

DK SITI ZULAIKHA PG HJ ISHAK

Year of Intake: 2021
Email: zulaikha.ishak@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Dr Faizah Zakaria

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Zulaikha’s research investigates how a coastal village in Brunei sustains its belacan-making tradition through seasonal pulses shaped by unpredictability – when wind, shrimp, and memory momentarily align. In these brief openings, the community regathers around shared memory, labour, and place – countering official heritage scripts in what she frames as Pulse Heritage.

 

HIOE ZHI HUI JOANNA

Year of Intake: 2021
Email: joannahioe@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisors: Assoc Prof Vatthana Pholsena & Dr Serina Rahman

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Joanna's research focuses on the cumulative impact of slow violence and natural disasters on low-income coastal communities in the Philippines.

 

KYI KYI SEINN

Year of Intake: 2021
Email: kyikyiseinn@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisors: Assoc Prof Vatthana Pholsena & Assoc Prof Maitrii Aung-Thwin

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Kyi Kyi's dissertation explores how a series of contemporary crises in Myanmar, often framed through the notion of Ayedawbon (revolution), should not be understood as a single, unified national uprising. She argues that the 2021 Ayedawbon emerges as a fluid and contested collection of discourses and practices – produced and performed by different actors through both strategic and ad hoc responses, in pursuit of divergent aims and worldviews.

 

WANG XUN

Year of Intake: 2022
Email: wang_xun@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Assoc Prof Vatthana Pholsena

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Wang Xun is interested in how technology and industrial development have shaped society and the environment in post-1945 Vietnam. Her thesis examines the Thái Nguyên Steelworks to explore the everyday experiences of workers and the broader social and ecological impacts of industrial development. Her research began and developed under the mentorship of Assoc Prof Gerard Sasges and is now carried forward under the guidance of her current advisor.

 

SHARMINI APHRODITE

Year of Intake: 2024
Email: sharmini.aphrodite@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Dr Faizah Zakaria

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Sharmini's research project considers how elements of Kadazan-Dusun identity have historically developed and functioned as forms of resistance against Malaysian state hegemony.

 

MUHAMMAD MIRZA ARDI

Year of Intake: 2024
Email: mirzaardi@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Dr Faizah Zakaria

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Mirza's research investigates how Muslim technocrats in Aceh, constrained by limited knowledge, resources, and political agency, navigated competing policy trade-offs in implementing the Green Revolution. At the same time, local elites, religious leaders, and communities produced alternative knowledges that challenged the dominant technocratic model through counter-narratives grounded in local beliefs and experiences.

 

RIZKI AMALIA AFFIAT

Year of Intake: 2024
Email: rizkiaffiat@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Assoc Prof Douglas Kammen

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Rizki's research explores how women’s circular migration between rural and urban areas in Indonesia intertwines with capitalist development and agrarian change, as their labour – both paid and unpaid – helps sustain families, communities, and class structures. The case study is Lebak, in Banten Province.

 

ANGGA YUDHIYANSYAH

Year of Intake: 2025
Email: angga.y@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Dr Lin Hongxuan

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Angga's research examines changing class relations in Indonesia’s palm oil sector by analysing how a particular conjuncture of the transmigration programme and the Oil Palm Nucleus Estate Scheme in Sumatra gave rise to rural cooperatives as central institutions of class formation. 

 

YEW YING HAN

Year of Intake: 2025
Email: e1547383@u.nus.edu
Thesis Advisor: Assoc Prof Irving Chan Johnson

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Yew Ying Han currently focuses on research investigating how plants often dismissed as weeds, particularly lalang (Imperata cylindrica), shape human-environment relations in Southeast Asia. His work examines the intersections of crop cultivation, plantation economies, infrastructure, and indigenous communities with state-making and socio-political change.