PROFILE

My core research interest has been on the historical and sociological relationship between culture and state formation. I received my PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2005, the dissertation thesis for which was on the influence of ethnography on colonial state formation in British Malaya and the American Philippines. I have since branched out into three research areas: race and multiculturalism, postcolonialism and the politics of history and identity, and the cultural politics of global city making. Three forthcoming papers – Multicultural Carnivals and the Politics of the Spectacle in Global Singapore, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies; Oriental Purity: Postcolonial Discomfort and Asian Values, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique; Walking the Global City: The Politics of Rhythm and Memory in Singapore, Space and Culture – are indicative of the three research areas and their intersections. I am currently writing a book on Heritage and the Cultural Politics of Reurbanization in Hong Kong, Penang, and Singapore. I am also interested in the sociology of religion, particularly Christianity in Hong Kong and Singapore, and environmental sociology, particularly on how social norms affects environmental behaviour and on the relationship between happiness and the environment. I am co-investigator in two research projects, on Urban Aspirations in Asian Cities and on Heritage Conservation in Queenstown, Singapore, and potentially in another research project on Climate Change and Happiness.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

State Formation; Cultural Studies; Urban Studies; Religion; Environmental Sociology

Recent Publications

• “Affective Identities and the Recontextualisation of Elite Schools for Globalisation in Singapore,” Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2020, 18 (2): 208-220. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14767724.2020.1712191 
• “Super-diversity and the Bio-politics of Migrant Worker Exclusion in Singapore,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2019, 26 (3): 356-73. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2018.1530899 
• “Protest and the Culture War in Singapore,” in Terence Chong (ed.), Singapore: Navigating Differences: Integration in Singapore, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak, 2020, pp. 129-147. https://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/publication/2435  
• “Arrested Multiculturalisms: Race, Capitalism and State Formation in Malaysia and Singapore,” in Richard T. Ashcroft and Mark Bevir (eds.), Multiculturalism in the British Commonwealth, Comparative Perspectives on Theory and Practice, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019, pp. 191-211. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299320/multiculturalism-in-the-british-commonwealth  
• “Postcolonial Urbanisms and the Cultural Politics of Redeveloping Kowloon East, Hong Kong,” in Anoma Pieris (ed.), Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary Politics and Built Space, Routledge, 2019, pp. 221-236. https://www.routledge.com/Architecture-on-the-Borderline-Boundary-Politics-and-Built-Space/Pieris/p/book/9781138102828