News
On 20 May 2020, the Singapore government announced its three-phase roadmap to lift restrictions. Cultural activities — with limited crowd sizes — would resume only in the last phase as part of ‘a new normal’. The arts, heritage, and culture sectors have been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. With lockdowns in place […]
Assistant Professor Jack Meng Tat Chia (NUS Department of History) provides historical context to modern Buddhism in Singapore and a focused look at the Buddhist College of Singapore (BCS) in ‘Teaching Dharma, Grooming Sangha: The Buddhist College of Singapore’ (Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 2009). ‘Reformist Buddhism’, a direct analogue of the Protestant […]
The significance and importance of maritime trade to Singapore’s economy cannot be understated. For over 150 years, Singapore was designed to be a free port, serving as an indispensable calling station between India and the so-called ‘West Asia’ and ‘Far East’. Since independence, Singapore has ranked as the world’s second busiest port in terms of […]
As Buddhists in Singapore and around the world prepare to celebrate Vesak Day, a Special Issue of the journal Religions edited by Assistant Professor Jack Meng-Tat Chia (NUS History) has been published, titled ‘Beyond the Mainland: Buddhist Communities in Maritime Southeast Asia’. It features five articles by Southeast Asian-based scholars in Anthropology, Chinese Studies, Communication […]
In the face of rapidly ageing population, Singapore has become highly dependent on foreign domestic workers to provide home-based care for the elderly. Popular perception of the relationship between migrant caregivers and elderly care recipients is polarised. While some media reports have highlighted acts of abuse and even murder of the elderly by migrant caregivers, […]
Marking a cautiously calibrated return of the University to the normalcy of hosting large on-site events, this year’s CHS Open House is a two-day hybrid programme: 11 May on Zoom (and viewable on CHS’ Facebook page) and 14 May on several locations across the NUS Kent Ridge campus, specifically the areas around the Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS), and the Faculty of Science (FoS).
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 […]