Associate Professor HO SWEE LIN has done research and published extensively on urban transformations in Asia; fieldwork methods; global financial markets; financialization of daily life; the global flows of Asian popular culture; emergent corporate cultures; changing labour practices; the commercialization of intimacy; political economy of sexuality; and social formations of gender. She worked for two decades in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the UK – as auditor, financial journalist, and corporate executive – before receiving her MA in Comparative Culture at Sophia University (Japan), followed by MSc and PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Before joining NUS, she conducted studies as a Korea Foundation Research Fellow on the gendered selfhood, nationhood, and cultural identities through the globalization of South Korean popular culture, and later taught at The Catholic University of Korea.
Her current research on the political economy of the global classical music industry extends her studies of the neoliberal transformations of work in East Asia, by examining state production and promotion of talent, creativity, and passion to propel economic growth and become global cultural hubs; and the challenges they present to individuals in pursuit of professional careers within the classical music industry.