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The 1969 Singapore race riots were a seven-day fiasco that lasted from 31 May to 6 June 1969. Resulting from a spill-over of racial tensions in Malaysia, the 1969 riots were the first of two riots in post-independence Singapore history. Occurring not long after the tumultuous 1964 race riots, the 1969 riots once again highlighted […]
In the late 1990s, there were concerns of a decline in Singapore’s standard of English. This was attributed to Singaporeans’ penchant of using Singlish in casual conversation, which is grammatically incorrect and not commonly understood among foreigners. To reverse this problem, the Speak Good English Movement was launched on 29 April 2000 to discourage the […]
Inter- and intracultural encounters in the shape of religions, language, material objects and food allow for the blurring of boundaries established by official ethnic categories. The single racial category “Malay” is in fact comprised of different ethnic groups such as the Bugis, Boyanese, Javanese, and many others. The “Malay” category has historically been characterized by […]
On 16th April 2010, in an interview with Emmy award-winning journalist Charlie Rose, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: “The whole of our system is founded on a basic concept of meritocracy. You are where you are because you are the best man for the job, and not because of your connections or your parents […]
The street light-up for Ramadan and Hari Raya Puasa was first introduced in 1984 by Singapore’s Tourism Task Force. Now an annual affair, the light-up takes place for around a month from April to May at the Geylang Serai precinct, one of the most prominent ‘Malay places’ in Singapore. In ‘Locating “Malay Places” and Ethnic […]
Singapore’s first General Election as an independent nation was held on 13 April 1968. Out of fifty-eight seats, only two seats contested by the Worker’s Party, and another five seats contested by independents. This resulted in a walkover election won by the People’s Action Party (PAP) on nomination day. Since then, the PAP have […]
Dr Leher Singh, Ms Charlene Fu, Ms Zhi Wen Tay (all of NUS Infant and Child Language Centre), and Dr Roberta Golinkoff (University of Delaware) investigate the differences in how monolingual and bilingual babies learn new words in ‘Novel Word Learning in Bilingual and Monolingual Infants: Evidence for a Bilingual Advantage’ (Child Development, 2018). Previous […]
Ms Lai Peng Priscilla Ho (Principal Medical Social Worker, Tan Tock Seng Hospital) and Associate Professor Esther Goh (NUS Department of Social Work) explore the everyday lives of twelve heterosexual Chinese men living with the disease and how it impacts their self-identity in ‘I have HIV but I’m not the HIV – the experiences of […]
In January 2020, Changi Airport saw a record of 5,950,000 passengers, a 5.2 percent year-on-year increase, even as the first imported cases of COVID-19 were beginning to appear. At that period of time, people were still able to enjoy nearly uninhibited access to Singapore. With the conventional wisdom at that time being to manage, and […]
Prevalent historical narratives of Singapore have largely ignored the role of Indian pioneers such as Narayana Pillai, who was one of the earliest Indian businessmen to come to the island. Born on 21 March 1879, Pillai was also an interpreter and clerk who accompanied Raffles when he first landed in Singapore. Since pre-colonial times, Indian […]