The formation of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) in August 2019 suggests that the 14th General Election (GE) will be held soon. In an editorial in Yahoo! News, Associate Professor Bertha Henson (NUS Department of Communications and New Media) presents the pre-elections landscape in Singapore, past and present, and the implications of the EBRC’s […]

Seeking to create an intimate narrative of working lives in Singapore, Associate Professor Gerard Sasges and Ms Ng Shi Wen (NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies) explore in their new book, Hard at Work: Life in Singapore (NUS Press, 2019), the real-life stories of those who fuel Singapore’s development and progress. Together with a group […]

The 2015 Singaporean General Election (GE), held on 11 September, signified a political revitalisation of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) as it won 70% of the votes. This result came after the ‘watershed’ 2011 GE, where the PAP received the lowest number of votes (60%) since Singapore’s independence in 1963. Associate Professor Weiyu Zhang […]

What are the effects of exposing children to languages and dialects during infancy?   A recent study by NUS researchers led by Associate Professor Leher Singh (NUS Department of Psychology), “The impact of foreign language caregiving on native language acquisition” (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2019), showed that a language or dialect heard during infancy […]

On 7 September 1979, the Singapore government launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign, an initiative which aimed to improve proficiency in proper Mandarin and unify various Chinese dialect groups. This focus on Mandarin proficiency, alongside an emphasis on fluency in English during the foundational years of Singapore’s independence, was part of a bilingual language policy that […]

On 6 August 2019, the Parliament of Singapore passed the Point-to-Point Passenger Transport Industry Bill, which mandates that all ride-hail and street-hail service providers with a fleet size of more than 800 vehicles will have to be licensed from June 2020. In essence, the government is making moves to exercise oversight and regulation over such […]

For island nations like Singapore, the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather and rising sea levels, are amplified. Traditional methods of protecting Singapore’s shorelines include concrete seawalls or increasing land reclamation heights. In an editorial in The Straits Times, Associate Professor Daniel Friess (NUS Department of Geography) suggests supplementing such methods by leveraging […]

In August 1992, the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act came into effect, with the intention of preserving religious harmony and ensuring that religion is not used to instigate any political causes or to organize any subversive activities in Singapore. A similar piece of legislation is Section 298A of the Penal Code, which states that one […]

Professor Wei-Jun Jean Yeung (NUS Department of Sociology), in an editorial in The Straits Times, talks about the need to counter ageism and integrate the silver workforce better amidst the National Day Rally announcements to increase the retirement age and re-employment age to 65 and 70, respectively, by 2030. Prof Yeung believes the changes are […]