Over the years, the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), held this year from 1 to 10 November, has become an exciting meeting point for writers, academics, and thinkers across the world. In the same spirit, Associate Professor Chitra Sankaran from the NUS Department of English Language and Literature teamed up with Dr John Nkengasong from the […]

In an editorial in The Straits Times, University Professor Wang Gungwu (NUS Department of History) discusses the historical Singapore psyche, which encompasses feelings of separation from its Malay hinterland and connection to the more distant China, and suggests that a rethinking is needed to facilitate the strengthening of Singapore’s relations with the Association of Southeast […]

In an editorial in Channel NewsAsia, Assistant Professor Alvin Lim Eng Hui (NUS Department of English Language and Literature) discusses the increasing penetration of new media and digital technology into Singapore’s religious landscape, and its resulting benefits and challenges. Many religions and its followers have leveraged on new media platforms to broaden their reach and […]

The World Health Organization designates the 10th of October as World Mental Health Day with the aim of educating people on mental health issues, and allowing stakeholders tackling such issues to share their work with the public. Not only is it important to increase awareness of mental health issues, it is also paramount to understand […]

The study of Singapore’s history across the past 700 years reveals key continuities and discontinuities. In an editorial in The Straits Times, Associate Professor Peter Borschberg (NUS Department of History) highlights two insights from Singapore’s distant past – firstly, Singapore was and remains a contested space and secondly, Singapore had shifting roles across the centuries. […]

On 1 October, the final day of the Singapore Bicentennial Conference, National University of Singapore academics expressed their worries over Southeast Asia’s widening inequality between rich elites and millions of poor. Professor Brenda Yeoh (NUS Department of Geography) acknowledged the growing diversity in the region, as evidence by the increasing number of marriages between Singaporeans […]

The late Professor Syed Hussein Alatas, internationally renowned Malaysian social scientist and also the first Head of Department of the NUS Department of Malay Studies, was honoured on 17 September 2019 at the Second Syed Hussein Alatas Memorial Lecture. During the lecture, Professor Tommy Koh (NUS Faculty of Law) highlighted four facets of Prof Alatas’ […]

In September, one month after enhanced subsidies for childcare were announced at the National Day Rally, the Early Childhood Development Agency announced that one-fifth of childcare centres in Singapore (which is 330 of them) would be raising full-day childcare fees due to rising costs. Parents worried that the fee increases would negate the subsidies, which […]

3 October 1990 marked the start of official relations between Singapore and China. Both countries have established warm ties over the years, with China especially important to Singapore as a trade partner and an immigrant source country. China’s abundant population provided both skilled and unskilled migrants to ease Singapore’s labour shortage in the 1990s. However, […]

In the second session of the Singapore Bicentennial Conference held on 1 October, with the theme of ‘Separations & Connections’, Professor Tan Tai Yong (NUS Department of History) spoke about Singapore’s merger and subsequent separation with Malaysia as an example of contesting visions and ideas in its history. Furthermore, he added that merger with Malaysia […]