Research
Live screening of Hacking the Wild premiere on 16th Feb
CNM’s Dr Andrew Quitmeyer is starring in Discovery Channel’s ‘Hacking the Wild’ series, which premieres this month. Watch the trailer here https://goo.gl/xLC516
Dr Quitmeyer is hosting a live screening of the first show on 16 Feb 2017, 11am at LT 7A, Building 36.
To read more on his research and for details of the screening head over here
https://goo.gl/54Lnvt
Hope to see you at the screening!
FASS Bookshare – 2 March (Thursday), Noon, at the RD Seminar Room on L6, AS 7
FASS Bookshare is back for 2017! Check out the Bookshare catalogue here and reserve your seats here.
Programme
11:45am-12pm: Registration and Refreshments
12-12:05pm: Lionel Wee introduces the authors and books
12:05-12:20: Khairudin Aljunied presents Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Southeast Asian Islam in Comparative Perspective
12:20-12:35: Tim Bunnell presents From World City to the World in One City: Liverpool Through Malay Lives
12:35-12:50: Jamie Gillen presents Entrepreneurialism and Tourism in Contemporary Vietnam
12:50-1:05: Q & A session
1:05: Light Bites
CALL FOR RESEARCH PARTICIPATION
Study Title: Implementing and evaluating the impact of a new science communication syllabus
Researchers: Dr Sirinut Sawatdeenarunat & Mr Jonathan Tang, Centre for English Language Communication (CELC), National University of Singapore.
Purpose: This research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a new science communication syllabus which focuses on making science writing comprehensible and interesting to non-scientists.
Benefits for participants: You will be reimbursed $40 for your time spent in participating in one reading session (up to 4 hours).
Participants: Any National University of Singapore (NUS) undergraduate who has not taken a science module in the university.
Reading session (up to 4 hours)
- Participants will read 5 science news articles (approximately 800-1,000 words) which aim to inform and interest non-scientists of a new development in science.
- Participants will rate the article using a 5-point scale regarding its comprehensibility and newsworthy value.
- Participants will also answer 5 questions by selecting whether the given statement is True or False based on the content of the article.
Sessions will be held in January – March 2017 at CELC (10 Architecture Drive). You can select from 4 to 6 sessions to suit your availability.
If you are interested to participate, please contact Marion Tan via email at e0042031@u.nus.edu stating your name, major and contact number by Friday 20 January 2017.
Also, if you have any friends who have not taken a science module in the university and might be interested to participate, please help to pass this message on to them as well.
Thank you!
Launch of Ancient Southeast Asia by John Miksic & Goh Geok Yian (Fri, 11 Nov, Level 16, The POD, NLB, 6:30-8:30pm), presented by The Singapore Research Nexus (SRN)
Professor John N. Miksic (NUS Dept of Southeast Asian Studies) and Associate Professor Goh Geok Yian (NTU HSS) will talk about their latest book, Ancient Southeast Asia, published by Routledge Area Studies, on Fri, 11 Nov, at Level 16, The POD, National Library Building.
Discounted copies of the book will be available at the launch. Seating is limited, so please register your attendance here: https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/book-launch-of-ancient-southeast-asia-by-john-n-miksic-and-goh-geok-yian-tickets-28352702697
Hope you can join us next month for the launch!
Details of the event are below and at the link above.
Launch of Ancient Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2016), presented by The Singapore Research Nexus (SRN)
John Miksic and Goh Geok Yian will discuss how they decided to structure Ancient Southeast Asia, which is organized not by modern 
polity, nor by reference to modern ethno-linguistic groups, but by smaller geographical units corresponding to what O. W. Wolters termed mandalas. The units can be grouped in a 3×3 grid which stretches from the north tropics, to the equatorial zone, to the south tropics, and from west of the Wallace Line to Wallacea, to the area east of Weber’s line. They will also discuss relations between mainland-island and upland-lowland. Miksic and Goh emphasize trade, travel, and connections rather than isolation and independent development.
The authors will then speak on the prehistoric period, after which they will focus on the position of Singapore in the larger scope of ancient Southeast Asia. Singapore was part of a class of trading ports of the Late Classical and Post Classical eras. It was an example of early hybrid societies which appeared when Chinese enclaves developed. They will touch on the historiography of Southeast Asia and the usage of literary theory to analyse Southeast Asian oral and written traditions.
They will discuss, in addition, how knowledge of the premodern period is essential to understanding what transpired in Southeast Asia after 1600, when the book ends.
A Question and Answer Session of half an hour will follow the talk, which commences at 7pm and lasts approximately 1 hour. There will be a Registration period of half an hour before the talk begins and light refreshments will be provided (6:30pm).
Books will be available for sale from Routledge at a special discount. Payment by cash or credit card only.
Original price: S$53.20
Less 30%: S$37.30
7% GST: S$2.70
Total: S$40.00
Schedule
Registration & light refreshments – 6:30pm
Talk by John N. Miksic and Goh Geok Yian – 7pm
Q and A – 8pm
About the Authors
Professor John N. Miksic joined the newly-formed NUS Southeast Asian Studies Programme, as the Department was then called, in 1991, having taught at the NUS Department of History after moving to Singapore in 1987. He has served on the National Heritage Board and the advisory boards of the National University Museum and the Asian Civilisations Museum and has received awards from Singapore and Indonesia for contributions to the study of Southeast Asian culture. Miksic served on the board of the Center for Khmer Studies from 2000 to 2016. His current research projects include the archaeology of ancient ports on the shores of the Straits of Melaka, early cities in Indonesia, Cambodia, and Myanmar, and ceramic analysis. Miksic also manages the Department of Southeast Asian Studies Archaeology Laboratory.
Associate Professor Goh Geok Yian joined the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at NTU in January 2008. Her research interests include archaeology and early history of Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Burma and Southeast Asian mainland, world history and civilizations, classical and modern Burmese literature, and early communication, cultural, and trade networks between regions particularly those of Southeast Asia with the Indian Ocean and South China Sea regions. Her current research focuses on the study of Buddhist architecture and mural paintings of Bagan, a medieval Burmese kingdom. Goh’s other research work includes the study of early urbanization and cities in Burma, particularly on comparison made with other contemporary Southeast Asian polities and the applicability of theoretical models. She is also working on an English translation of a 20th-century Burmese novel by a well-known author, Ma Sandar.
NUS Philosophy Bookshare – April 7 2016
Authors from the NUS Department of Philosophy will be speaking about their recent books on April 7th, Thursday at 1-2pm in the RD Seminar Room, AS7. Read more at the link below.
FASS Bookshare, 28 March, 4-5pm, Faculty Lounge
FASS Bookshare is coming soon! On March 28, Professor Jonathan Rigg (Geography) will be speaking about Challenging Southeast Asian Development: The Shadows of Success, Associate Professor John Whalen-Bridge (ELL) will present on his new book, Tibet on Fire: Buddhism, Protest, and the Rhetoric of Self-Immolation, and Assistant Professor Annu Jalais (SAS) will talk about The Bengal Diaspora: Muslim Migrants in Britain, India and Bangladesh.
Be there at 4pm at the Faculty Lounge!
RSVP to fassresearchevents@nus.edu.sg
Additional details and Bookshare catalogue available here.
Research Highlights, February 2016
The latest newsletter from the FASS Research Division has been published! Read it here.
Apparatuses of Eco-Gastronomy: Scale, Bodies, Performance, 15 Feb 2016, 4-6pm
FASS STS Cluster presents Apparatuses of Eco-Gastronomy: Scale, Bodies, Performance by Dr David Szanto on 15 Feb 2016 from 4-6pm in the CNM Playroom. For more information and registration, click here.
Malaysia-Singapore Forum 2015
The two day Malaysia-Singapore Forum kicked off on Monday the 7th of December and ended on Tuesday, December 8th. The programme for the SG-MY Forum, 
including abstracts, is available here. 2015 marks the 15th time the MY-SG Forum has been held; the biennial event alternates between NUS and University Malaya (UM) in Kuala Lumpur.
This year’s theme was “Politics of Heritage”, which has become a popular research area in Southeast Asian Studies, particularly as it pertains to Singapore and Malaysia. The Forum began with a session on “Reviewing Histories and Identities”. Associate Professor Sharmani Patricia Gabriel of UM’s English Department presented on “Identity, History, and Postcoloniality in Malaysia: Nation and the Artifice of Heritage”. 
This was followed by “The Connected Histories of Johor and Singapore” a talk by Adjunct Assoc Professor Kwa Chong Guan from the NUS Department of History. The final paper presentation, “The Role of the National Museum in Representing Malaysian Identity” was delivered by Yasaman Alsadat Hosseini, a Masters Candidate at UM’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
The second session focused on “Heritage and the Community”, and began with “Heritage Making 
and Value to the City: Challenges for Community and City”, a research presentation by Associate Professor Ho Kong Chong, NUS Department of Sociology. Next was “Orang Asli and Protected Areas: Are Jahai Partners or Muted Heritage in the Royal Belum State Park?” by Kamal Solhaimi Fadzil, Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology & Sociology at UM. Dr Susan Philip of the UM English Department ended the session with her talk titled “Mapping Heritage in the Streets: Helping to Reconnect Youth with Disappearing Heritages”.
Session III, “Re-reading Heritage in Texts and Literature” started with Dr Azhar Ibrahim (Visiting Fellow, NUS Department of Malay Studies) speaking on “Texting and Booking Heritage: The Euphoria in Heritage Making and Its Limit”. The second speaker, Dr Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja, Associate Professor at the UM History Department, presented a paper titled “Losing Historical Heritage to Politically Incubated Heritage: The Case of the Malaysian Indians”, and the final speaker, Dr Kelvin Lawrence, Postdoctoral Fellow at the NUS Department of History, gave a talk on “Reclaiming the Probable Amid Perpetuating Tenuity: Historicising Two Discursive Legacies in the Writings of Munsyi Abdulla”.
The next session, “Negotiating Modernization and Heritage”, featured a presentation on “A Tradition of Modernity: Reading the Past of Malaysian Science and Technology Through the Case of Rubber Research” by Leow Wei Yi, a PhD Candidate in Comparative Asian Studies at NUS, and another on “Demolition as an Act of Remembering: Old National Library Building” by Bernard Sim Yang Jun, who is a Masters Candidate at the NUS Department of Political Science.
Day two of the Forum commenced with the “Art and Artistry” panel, which included Associate Professor T.C. Chang’s (NUS Department of Geography) paper, “Illegal Art on Legal Walls: Graffiti in Singapore”, “Aging with Kumar’s Political Semiotics” by Jyh Wee Sew, a Lecturer at the NUS Centre for Language Studies, and PhD Candidate Janet Rata Noel’s (UM Gender Studies Programme) presentation, “Pua Kumbu and the Politics of Heritage”.
“Heritage in Situ”, the panel that followed, began with a paper, “The Past, Present and the Future: Chinese Cem
eteries in Malaysia”, by Professor Danny Wong Tze Ken of the UM Department of History and Dr Ong Siew Kian of the UM Department of Chinese Studies. Next up was NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies Professor John N. Miksic’s talk on “Preservation of Colonial vs Precolonial Heritage on the Hills of Singapore and Melaka”. Lastly, Dr Lili Yulyadi Arnakim (UM Department of Southeast Asian Studies) spoke on “Conservation of Tangible Heritage: Some Lessons Learnt from Singapore and Malaysia’s Agreement on Tanjong Pagar Rail Station”.
The Forum’s concluding session, “Politicizing Cultural Representation”, started with PhD Candidate Ritu Jain’s (NUS South Asian Studies Programme) talk “Singapore’s (m)other Tongue Policy: the Case of the Indians in Singapore”. The second presenter, Pauline Luk (Department of Communications and New Media), also a PhD Candidate, spoke about “Cultural Heritage Politics of Chinese Medicine in Singapore”. The final presentation was “Understanding the Perceptions of the Host Country’s Food Culture among Myanmarese Domestic Workers in Singapore” by Kakit Cheong (Masters Candidate, NUS Department of Communications and New Media) and Eugene Gao, an independent researcher.