BA(Hons) (Oxford), MA (NUS), Ph.D. (Cambridge, UK)
Tel: (65) 6516 6057
Office: AS1 05 - 08

Despite being born and educated in Singapore, my passion for Singapore history was a fairly late development. As an undergraduate in Britain, my studies concentrated on medieval European history and it was only after returning to Singapore and working at the National Archives of Singapore, as well as becoming a member of the Singapore Heritage Society, that I began to understand and appreciate the richness of local history. My research so far has been focused on Anglophone Asian communities in Singapore between 1920-1940, particularly in terms of social, cultural and intellectual history. In writings on Singapore history, the vibrancy and energy of this period has often been overlooked. My M.A. centred on the attempts of this ethnically-diverse group of English-speaking non-Europeans in Singapore to negotiate their identity/identities in terms of ethnicity, nation and empire. In my Ph.D., I looked at how modernity affected the everyday lives of this same group of people, focusing primarily on the social history of the motor car, cinema, radio and gramophone in the twenties and thirties. I now plan to extend my research more thoroughly into the experience of women and the domestic sphere. At the History Department, I coordinate and co-teach the module, SSA2211 Singapore: Evolution of a Global City State, and will be launching a new module, HY2254 Popular Culture in Singapore in January 2009. To get a better feel for the past, I love going for heritage walking tours of Singapore. Don't forget to check out my favourite place on the internet, the Singapore Heritage email list, which is full of news, information, events and discussion: PUBLICATIONS: ‘Imperial Subjects, Straits Citizens…: Anglophone Asians and the Struggle for Political Rights in Inter-War Singapore’, in Carl Trocki and Michael Barr (eds.), Paths Not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-war Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, forthcoming 2008)

PUBLICATIONS:

‘Imperial Subjects, Straits Citizens…: Anglophone Asians and the Struggle for Political Rights in Inter-War Singapore’, in Carl Trocki and Michael Barr (eds.), Paths Not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-war Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, forthcoming 2008)


AREAS OF INTEREST: