Our Students (Graduate studies) – Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Graduate Students and Alumni

Our graduate students hail from different countries in and beyond Asia

As of July 2023, there are 19 PhD students and 5 MA students.

Publications

Our graduate students are hardworking, passionate, and productive with stellar records of publications and conference attendance. Their works are published in reputable academic journals in Sociology and Anthropology, including SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, Modern China, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Journal of Business Anthropology, Contemporary Islam, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Aging and Health, LGBT Health, China Quarterly, Gender & Society, and Chinese Sociological Review.

Academic Conferences

Besides formal publications, graduate students in our department also actively participate in academic conferences, usually with the financial support from NUS on a competitive basis.

Conference attendance is important in gaining visibility and impact for graduate students’ work, and also to provide constructive comments regarding the direction of development. Our students participated in a variety of conferences, both at the international and regional levels, and covering different fields of studies.

Conferences that our graduate students attended include professional meetings of the Population Association of America, the British Sociological Association, Association for Asian Studies (AAS)-in-Asia; the International Sociological Association, the American Anthropological Association, the Australian Sociological Association Conference, the Asian Population Association International Conference, the Gender and Education Association, Association for the Sociology of Religion Annual Meeting, amongst others.

Engagements

Besides formal publications, graduate students in our department also actively participate in academic conferences, usually with the financial support from NUS on a competitive basis.

Graduate Placements

Our recent Masters graduates are well placed in highly ranked Ph.D. programmes in Sociology and Anthropology that include the University of Cambridge, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Princeton University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of California, San Diego, the University of London, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the University of Pennsylvania, and University of Southern California. Other MA graduates hold appointments in both the public and private sectors such as government agencies, consulting and research firms, or other non-profit organisations in Singapore and beyond.

Our Ph.D. graduates occupy positions in reputable academic institutions worldwide, including Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the UK, and USA, amongst others. These include Purdue University, Yonsei University, Duke-NUS, Durham University, Ateneo de Manila University, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Delhi), Singapore University of Social Sciences, the University of Philippines Diliman, Hong Kong Baptist University, Erasmus University, the University of Southampton, the University of Suffolk, and many other schools. Our other graduates also pursue research and policy careers in prominent government ministries and international agencies, research centres and think tanks, as well as consulting companies.

Hear from our students

Norazim Bin Azami

Masters Candidate

“I think it’s been really amazing because the group of students that we have here, regardless of the Master’s and PhDs, are really diverse. You’ll be surprised that this itself is really empowering and it opens up your mind about the world. It makes you so excited about what to learn in the world.”

Yanwen Wang

PhD Candidate

“This department has a great reputation for its academic excellence. The genuine passion and a collective urgency to do research lead the voice of the people here, a voice that really decolonized, that liberates and that in every way cares about social issues.”

Sandeepan Tripathy

PhD Candidate

“As a graduate student, it’s a nice atmosphere here. You get to speak with a lot of faculties. Everyone’s open-minded. You can interact with a lot of people across disciplines not only in the department but also across departments.”

Alumni's Profiles

MA Students

Junbin Tan

Junbin Tan graduated with a Master’s of Social Sciences in 2016. His thesis titled “‘Minding Precarious Minds’: The Ethics and Politics of Dementia Care Work in Singapore” was conducted under the supervision of Kelvin Low. Parts of his thesis have been published in Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness. He is presently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Princeton University. His research interests lie at the intersection of studies of religious affects, political subjectivities, temporality, and generational life. His doctoral dissertation “Moving Gods, Moving Times: Cosmological Anxieties at Taiwan’s Border with China” is based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork on Kinmen, and examines the efforts by the current generation of older adults and an emergent group of “cultural-historical workers” (wenshi gongzuozhe) to “salvage” ritual customs that they regard as disappearing.

Nursyazwani Jamaludin

Nursyazwani Jamaludin completed her Masters of Social Sciences in 2019 under the supervision of Kelvin Low. Her thesis was titled “Assembling the Legible Refugee: A Case Study of Rohingyas in Klang Valley, Malaysia”. Wani is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in the University of Pennsylvania and is interested in refugees’ everyday struggles to rethink new kinds of politics emerging from the global south. Her research interests revolve around questions of citizenship, violence, politics, refugee political subjectivity, and migration. Prior to her Ph.D. candidature, she was a Research Associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. She is also actively involved with Advocates for Refugees-Singapore. Her works have been published in American Behavioral Scientist and New Mandala.

Imad Alatas

Imad Alatas graduated with a Masters of Social Sciences in 2022. Working under the supervision of Eric Thompson, his thesis was titled “Women’s Issues and What It Means to be a Muslimah: The Religious Orientations of Female Muslim Activists in Malaysia”. Imad is now a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research areas include religion, youth, and gender. His works were published in Asia Pacific Social Science Review, and Southeast Asian Social Science Review, amongst others.

PhD Students

Lee Sang Kook

Lee Sang Kook graduated with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from NUS in 2007. His thesis titled “Integrating Others: A Study of a Border Social System in the Thailand-Burma Borderland” was supervised by the late Ananda Rajah and Saroja Dorairajoo. Sang Kook is presently Dean and Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Yonsei University in South Korea. He was previously Assistant Professor in the Institute of East Asian Studies, Sogang University and Fulbright Visiting Fellow in the Asia-Pacific Institute, Duke University. His research interests include refugees, migration, and border studies, and has published in leading journals such as Pacific Affairs, Journal of Refugee Studies, Space and Society, Asian Studies Review and JMBRAS

Sarbeswar Sahoo

Sarbeswar Sahoo completed his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2009 and is currently Professor of Sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. His thesis titled “The Multiple Faces of Civil Society: Development and Democratization in Rajasthan was supervised under Vedi Hadiz. He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Erfurt (Germany) and Charles Wallace Fellow at Queen's University Belfast (UK), and has held Visiting Fellowships in the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Denmark and Singapore. Sarbeswar’s research covers state, civil society and democratisation, Sociology/Anthropology of Religion (Christianity), and neo-liberalism, and has published two single-authored books, Civil Society and Democratization in India (Routledge, 2013) and Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and a co-edited book, Godroads: Modalities of Conversion in India (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Alice Nah

Alice Nah graduated with a Ph.D. in Sociology in 2011 under the supervision of Roxana Waterson. Her thesis was titled “State Power and the Regulation of Non-Citizens: Immigration Laws, Policies, and Practices in Peninsular Malaysia”. Alice is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Durham University in the UK. She has conducted research and published extensively on the security and protection of human rights defenders at risk, and on asylum and migration in Asia. Her works have appeared in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Journal of Human Rights, Social Movements Studies, and Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde, amongst others.

Hu Shu

Hu Shu graduated with a Ph.D. in Sociology in NUS in 2015. Her thesis titled “Parental Labor Migration and Adolescents' Transition to High School in Rural China” was conducted under the supervision of Jean Yeung and won the Ananda Rajah Prize. Hu Shu is currently Senior Lecturer and Head in the Sociology Programme at Singapore University of Social Sciences. She was previously Research Fellow in the Asia Research Institute and Centre for Family and Population Research, National University of Singapore. Her research interests include migration, family, and gender, and has published in journals such as Social Science Research, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Family Issues, Chinese Journal of Sociology, and Chinese Sociological Review.

Pildoo Sung

Pildoo Sung received a Ph.D. in Sociology from National University of Singapore in 2020. His thesis titled “Trust and Health: A Cross-national Perspective” was supervised by Joonmo Son. Pildoo is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. He previously worked as a research fellow at the Center for Ageing Research and Education at Duke-NUS Medical School from 2020 to 2023. His research explores complexity and dynamics of social relationships and health; stress, coping, and mental well-being among family caregivers; and social capital in a comparative perspective. He has published in leading journals such as The Journals of Gerontology Social Sciences, Social Science & Medicine, Gerontology, and International Journal of Comparative Sociology amongst others.

Hear from our Alumni

Dr. Veronica L. Gregorio

PhD Graduate, Lecturer at National University of Singapore

During my PhD study here, I did one fellowship in Sydney and I received support from the department first during the application process, such as being flexible with my schedule of the teaching hours and some other services that I had to do for the department. That semester was really productive for me in Sydney. Of course, I missed NUS at that time, but they supported me to be able to engage with other universities.