HAMZAH MUZAINI

I received my PhD in Human Geography in 2009 from Durham University (UK). Prior to that, I was heritage consultant, licensed tour guide and curator of the Changi Chapel and Museum (Singapore). Following my PhD, I was Visiting Fellow at the Department of Geography (NUS) and Assistant Professor with the Cultural Geography chair group of Wageningen University (the Netherlands). I joined the Southeast Asian Studies Department family at NUS in August 2016 and will be teaching courses related to Southeast Asian heritage and socio-cultural landscapes in Southeast Asia. On a (perhaps more exciting) personal note, I am very much a music and movie buff and enjoy travelling the region and beyond, exploring (what else?) heritage but also whatever catches my fancy.

Teaching Areas Graduate Supervision Current Research Research Interests Publications

Teaching Areas

SE2225 Forbidden Pleasures: Vice in Southeast Asia
SE3214 Heritage and Heritagescapes in Southeast Asia
SE5221 / GE5214 Landscapes of Southeast Asia

Graduate Supervision

Current Research

I am a cultural and historical geographer with strong interests in social and spatial theory particularly as applied to heritage, memory and remembrance. My primary research spans four empirical field sites: (a) the memory politics associated with the Second World War as it has been currently (and historically) commemorated in Singapore and Malaysia, conceptualised around postcolonial theory, materiality, cyber-memorialisation, transnational deaths, the immanent past, and practices of power and resistance in everyday spaces. I am also interested in the theme of critical ‘heritage-from-below’ or forms of (non-state) memory and heritage produced and consumed on the ground or within more intimate spaces that are not highly visible and so very much at risk. This is empirically accomplished through my (field)work on/with (b) cultural theme parks in Malaysia, specifically the Sarawak Cultural Village, (c) the Moluccan migrant community in the Netherlands, and (d) heritage making processes of the Southern Islands in Singapore. In addition to these topics, I have also published on dark tourism, backpacking cultures and the transnational histories and geographies of Southeast Asia.

Research Interests

Publications

BOOKS
Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, Brenda S.A. (2016) Contested Memoryscapes: The Politics of Second World War Commemoration in Singapore, Routledge, London and New York.

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
Muzaini, H. (in press) ‘Peace education: peace museums’, in Kurtz, Lester (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict (Third Edition), Elsevier, Oxford.

Muzaini, H. (2020) ‘Locating ‘Malay places’ and ethnic identity making in Singapore’, in Rasheed, Zainul Abidin and Wan Hussin Zoohri (eds) Beyond Bicentennial: Perspectives on Malays, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore.

Muzaini, H. (2020) ‘Pulau Sekijang Pelepah: A Frontier Island in Malay History’, Passage May/June issue, pp. 10-11.

Muzaini, H. (2019) ‘The state of Malaysian war memory: ‘postcolonializing’ museums in Perak’, in Frost, Mark R., Schumacher, Daniel and Vickers, Edward (eds) Remembering Asia’s World War Two, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 107-126.

Muzaini, H. (2018) ‘Informal heritage making at the Sarawak Cultural Village, East Malaysia’, in Erb, Maribeth and Ong, C.E. (eds) Theming Asia: culture, nature and heritage in a transforming environment, Routledge: London and New York.

Muzaini, H. and Minca, Claudio (2018) ‘Rethinking heritage, but ‘from below’’, in Muzaini, H. and Minca, Claudio (2018) After Heritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage from Below, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham and Northampton, pp. 1-21.

Ang, Ien, Vickers, Edward, Winter, Tim, Yeoh, Brenda S.A., Frost, Mark R., Muzaini, H. and Schumacher, Daniel (2018) ‘Concluding remarks’, in Schumacher, Daniel and Yeo, Stephanie (eds) Exhibiting the fall of Singapore: close readings of a global event, National Museum of Singapore, Singapore.

Said, T., Muzaini, H. and Duim, R. van der (2018) ‘Climate change and tourism in Zanzibar: interrogating impacts and interventions’, in Jones, A. and Phillips, M. (eds) Global Climate Change and Coastal Tourism: Recognizing Problems, Managing Solutions and Future Expectations, CAB International: Oxfordshire and Boston, pp. 300-311.

Muzaini, H. (2017) ‘Necrogeography’, in Richardson, Douglas, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, Richard A Marston (eds) The international encyclopedia of geography: people, the earth, environment, and technology, Chichester, UK, Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons.

Khalid, N.S. and Muzaini, H. (2016) ‘Theming and Imagineering as a Place-Making Strategy – A Case Study of Islamic Tourism in Malaysia’, in Loke Yiing Jia, Sharifah Rohayah Sheikh Daewood and Saidatulakmal Mohd (eds) International Conference on Humanities, USM Malaysia, 64-71.

Muzaini, H. (2016) ‘Personal Reflections on Formal WWII Memories in Everyday Spaces in Singapore’, in Drodzewski, D., DeNardi, S. and Waterton, E. (eds) Memories of War, Place and Identity, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 58-82.

Muzaini, H. (2013) ‘Heritage and Nation-building in Singapore’, in Elaine Ho, Woon Chih Yuan and Kamalini Ramdas (eds) Changing Landscapes of Singapore: A Reader, National University of Singapore, Singapore, pp. 25-42.

Muzaini, H. (2012) ‘Making Memories Our Own (Ways)’: Non-State War Remembrances of the Second World War in Perak, Malaysia’, in Owain Jones and Garde-Hansen (eds) Geography and Memory: Explorations in Identity, Place and Becoming, Palgrave McMillan, Hampshire and New York, pp. 216-233.

Bunnell, T., Muzaini, H. and Sidaway, J.D. (2011) ‘Global city frontiers: Singapore’s hinterland and the contested socio-political geographies of Bintan, Indonesia’, Wastl-Walter, Doris (ed.) The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, Ashgate, Surrey, pp. 457-480.

Muzaini, H. (2008) ‘Peace education: peace museums’, in Kurtz, Lester (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict (Second Edition), Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 1488-1498.

Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B.S.A (2007) ‘Contesting ‘local’ commemoration of the Second World War: the case of the Changi Chapel and Museum in Singapore’, in Watson, S. (ed.) Museums and their Communities, Leicester Readers in Museum Studies, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 418-434.

EDITORIAL WORK ON BOOKS
Muzaini, H. and Minca, Claudio (2018) After Heritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage from Below, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham and Northampton (reprinted as paperback rolled out in 2020).

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS
Muzaini, H. (2021) ‘‘Critical heritage ‘from below’: (e)valu(at)ing informal war pasts in Perak, Malaysia’, Space and Culture 24(3): 378-391.

Muzaini, H. (2021) ‘Rethinking the living museum concept from below’, Journal of Cultural Geography 38(1): 81-101.

Muzaini, H. (2017) ‘Informal heritage making at the Sarawak Cultural Village, East Malaysia’, Tourism Geographies 19(2): 244-264.

Bulkens, M., Muzaini, H. and Minca, C. (2016) ‘Dutch new nature: (re)landscaping the Millingerwaard’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 59(5): 808-825.

Bulkens, M., Minca, C. and Muzaini, H. (2015a) 'Sightlines, Sightareas and Unbroken Open Spaces? More-than- Representational Conceptualisations in Dutch Landscape Planning', Geographica Helvetica 70: 239-249.

Bulkens, M., Minca, C. and Muzaini, H. (2015b), ‘Storytelling as Method in Spatial Planning’, European Planning Studies 23(11): 2310-2326.

Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (2015) ‘An Exploration of Memory-Making in the Digital Era: Remembering the FEPOW Story Online’, TESG 106(1): 53-64.

Muzaini, H. (2014) ‘On the matter of forgetting and ‘memory returns’’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographer 40(1): 102-112.

Muzaini, H. (2014) ‘(In)Formal Memoryscapes and the Unma(s)king of a Malaysian War Heroine’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35(3): 382-396.

Muzaini, H. (2014) ‘The afterlives and memory politics of the Ipoh Cenotaph in Perak, Malaysia’, Geoforum 54: 142-150.

Muzaini, H. (2013) ‘Scale politics, vernacular memory and the preservation of the Green Ridge battlefield in Kampar, Malaysia, Social & Cultural Geography 14(4): 389-409.

Muzaini, H., Teo, P. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (2007) ‘Intimations of postmodernity in Dark tourism: the fate of history at Fort Siloso, Singapore’, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 5 (1), pp. 28-45.

Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (2007) ‘Memory-making ‘from below’: rescaling remembrance at the Kranji War Memorial and Cemetery, Singapore’, Environment and Planning A 39, pp. 1288-1305.

Muzaini, H. (2006) ‘Producing/consuming memoryscapes: the genesis and politics of Second World War commemoration in Singapore’, Geojournal 66, Special issue on ‘Heritage Issues in Southeast Asia’, pp. 211-222.

Muzaini, H. (2006) ‘Backpacking Southeast Asia: strategies of ‘looking local’, Annals of Tourism Research, 33 (1), pp. 144-161.

Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (2005) ‘War landscapes as ‘battlefields’ of collective memories: reading the Reflections at Bukit Chandu, Singapore’, Cultural Geographies 12, pp. 345-365.

Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (2005) ‘Reading representations of women’s war experiences in Changi Chapel and Museum, Singapore’, Geoforum 36, pp. 465-476.

Muzaini, H. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (2005) ‘Contesting ‘local’ commemoration of the Second World War: Changi Chapel and Museum in Singapore’, Australian Geographer 36 (1), pp. 1-17.

BOOK REVIEWS
Muzaini, H. (2017) Book Review for International Migration Review, Low, Kelvin E.Y. 2014. ‘Remembering the Samsui Women: Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China’, Vancouver/Toronto: University of British Columbia Press. xii, 252 pages.

Muzaini, H. (2016) Book Review for Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde/Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia 172 (2-3), Abu Talib Ahmad 2014, ‘Museums, History and Culture in Malaysia, NUS Press.

Muzaini, H. (2011) Book Review for Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Amy Mills ‘Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance, National Identity in Istanbul’, Georgia UP.