| Name | Research Interests |
| Assoc Prof Andrea Nanetti | Dr. Andrea Nanetti—as a scholar, who started his research vocation in historical studies at the advent of computer operating systems with graphical user interfaces—has always been fascinated by the exponential growth of interdependencies between artificial actions (i.e., made by humans) and computational operations, in terms of both quantity and quality (i.e., actions completed by electronic devices able to store and process data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to them in a variable program or machine learning, which allows algorithms to learn through experience, and do things that we are not able to program). With this interest, he is proposing the theoretical need to direct traditional disciplinary knowledge toward a formal science of heritage (i.e., the treasure of human experiences), which will focus on how data and information—now encoded in complex interactions of written, pictorial, sculptural, architectural, and digital records, oral memories, practices, and performed rituals—may be inherited by machine learning algorithms. This state-of-the-art science pioneers integrated action plans and solutions in response to, and in anticipation of, the exponential growth of emerging needs in our increasingly complex human society. In practice, the research uses multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary methods to identify case studies for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary teamwork investigations.
Since 2007, Dr. Nanetti's main research project is EHM-Engineering Historical Memory (http://www.engineeringhistoricalmemory.com, since 2015 on Microsoft Azure). EHM is both an experimental methodology and an ongoing research project for the organization of historical information in the machine learning age. He first theorized it as a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University in 2007. Since his arrival at NTU in 2013, Dr. Nanetti has been working on the globalisation of his research interests. Starting from his background studies on the world as seen from Venice through its chronicles and diaries (1205-1433), he opened the range of the investigation of other coeval historiographical traditions, in Chinese, Arab, Russian, and Persian. EHM develops and tests new sets of shared conceptualizations and formal specifications for content management systems in the domain of the Digital Humanities, with a focus on how to engineer the treasure of human experiences to serve decision making, knowledge transmission, and visionarios. In practice, his research develops and applies computationally intensive techniques (e.g. pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms derived from other disciplines, interactive and visualization solutions). From a theoretical point of view, he mainly works on history of historiography and studies new ontologies for the semantic web, inspired by Derrida's notion of trace, Ginzburg's "thread and traces" theory, and last but not least Umberto Eco's semiotics (e.g. 2007 Dall'Albero al Labirinto, published in English in 2015 as From the Tree to the Labyrinth).
In his long-term strategic fit at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Dr. Nanetti is working on the creation of a new generation of knowledge aggregators, which aims to test how new interactive media solution in immersive environments can improve the century-old experiences in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. |
| Asst Prof Astrid C Kensinger | Graphic Design history, typography, mapping, live art as communication and participation art. Currently working on three funded research and design projects using GPS, video and site-specific research in South East Asia and Europe. |
| Mr Benjamin Alexander Slater | Screenwriting Craft and Practice
Narratives & Storytelling
Interactive Narratives
Film Histories
Criticism
Creative Writing |
| Prof Chan Kam Leung Alan | Chinese Philosophy and Religion; Hermeneutics and Critical Theory; Comparative Philosophy and Religion |
| Asst Prof Chen Song-Chuan | Sino-Western relations during the Canton era
• Cultural exchanges
• Perceptions and imaginations
• Informational networks
• Relations between capital and the state
• Interactions between foreign sailors and costal peoples
Ming and Qing China in global history
• The great divergence
• Early Chinese travellers to the West
• Merchants and missionaries in China
• China’s perception of the West
• Commercial policy and perceptions of commerce
• State violence and people’s trauma experiences
Republican China and Taiwan
• Colonial experience and process of decolonization
• The making of Chinese nationalism
• Circulation of violence and experiences of trauma Contemporary history of Taiwan
• Matsu and Kinmen as frontier islands of the Cold War
• People’s experiences and memories of the Cold War
• Social and cultural changes after 1949
Chinese Religion
• History of death & cemetery
• History of Shenism deity creation |
| Asst Prof Christopher Peter Trigg | The American Puritans
The Radical Enlightenment
Transcendentalism
Political Theology
Religion in American Literature |
| Dr Cui Feng | Translation Studies,
20th Century Chinese Literature,
Comparative Literature,
The Literary Relations between China and Foreign Countries |
| Assoc Prof Danne Ojeda Hernandez | Her current research is devoted to the disciplinary redefinitions of Graphic Design and its implications in contemporary visual culture. It analyses antithetical aspects within the evolution of graphic design, like its communicative and allegoric nature, autonomy and social commitment, and expressivity and new media standards. The theoretical basis of this research includes binary concepts like natural/artificial, original/copy, public/private, and physical/virtual. The research is methodologically structured upon close readings of a variety of visual objects from the perspective of graphic design. These objects are discusses in connection with different sorts of conceptual platforms, like manifestos, (un)realized projects, curatorial proposals and critical reviews among others sources within today's dominant orientations in graphic design.
Moreover, her areas of interest can be summarized as follow: Issues in Visual Communication/Contemporary Design, Design Theory, Design and Science and Art and Design relations. Her areas of specializations regarding professional practice are mainly editorial and exhibition design.
At NTU, Prof. Ojeda is engaged (or has been engaged) with the following projects:
TIER1 [2013] D-SIGN-LAB. Research Experiments on Art, Design and Science with a focus on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Analysis.
TIER0 [2010] Asian-Pacific Mega-exhibitions: A Critical Perspective
RCC [2009] For the Sake of a Second Life: Approaches to Sustainable Design
—
Selection of Danne Ojeda’s works:
http://www.d-file.com
— |
| Asst Prof Fang Xiaoping | History of medicine, health and disease in twentieth-century China
Medical anthropology and sociology in contemporary China |
| Assoc Prof Goh Geok Yian | Associate Professor Goh Geok Yian's areas of expertise are: early history of Burma and Southeast Asia, modern Southeast Asian history, China-Southeast Asia relations, early Buddhist networks in mainland and island Southeast Asia, and Burmese historical chronicles and novels. Her current research focuses on the study of Buddhist architecture and mural paintings of Bagan, a medieval Burmese kingdom. Her 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. |
| Assoc Prof Hallam Stevens | My research focuses on the intersection between information technology and biotechnology. My first book is an historical and ethnographic account of the changes wrought to biological practice and biological knowledge by the introduction of the computer. Especially in highly computerized fields such as genomics, the computer has changed how biologists work, how biologists collaborate, and how biologists make knowledge.
I am currently pursuing two ongoing research projects. The first is an attempt to develop new methods of studying scientific practice by deploying tools from performance studies. In collaboration with a performance studies scholar, I am examining spaces of biomedical work in East Asia in an effort to deepen our understanding of how such spaces fit into the economic, social, and political context of the cities in which they sit. Sites under examination include Biopolis in Singapore and BGI in Shenzhen.
The second project examines the emergence of "big data." This apparently new field is quite suddenly having an immense impact on politics, the economy, and many aspects of our social world. What is really new about big data? What kinds of changes may it bring? Who will benefit? Historians of technology, in particular, are well equipped to ask and answer such important questions about this emerging phenomenon.
In addition to these projects, I have just completed a general audience book that examines that provides a broad overview of the social, political, and economic effects of biotechnology. The book will be published under the title "Biotechnology & Society" in 2016 (University of Chicago Press).
I am interested in supervising PhD students on topics related to the history of the life sciences, the history of information technology, and science and technology studies. |
| Assoc Prof I Lo-fen | Chinese Poetry and Visual Art
Chinese Literary Works on Paintings
Su Shi Studies
Interchange of East-Asian Culture and Literature in Classical Chinese
Asian Visual Culture and Esthetics |
| Asst Prof Jessica Bridgette Hinchy | Areas of research interest:
- The history of gender and sexuality in South Asia, specifically in eighteenth and nineteenth century north India
- Colonialism, in particular colonial governance, local policing, intelligence collection, and forms of colonial knowledge
- Crime and criminality, in particular the intersections of gender with concepts of criminality and the regulation of crime
- The history of slavery in eighteenth and nineteenth century north India, in the context of British colonialism
- The history of childhood in South Asia, in particular historical concepts of childhood and the experiences of marginalized children |
| Asst Prof Justin Clark | Justin Clark is an historian of visual and urban culture in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. |
| Assoc Prof Kamaludeen Bin Mohamed Nasir | Sociology of Religion; Cultural Sociology; Social Theory; Deviance and Social Control; Globalization; Sociology of Youth. |
| Asst Prof Kathrin Albers | Puppet Animation
Hand/Marionette/Shadowpuppet Play
Experimental Animation / Stereoscopic Animation
Character- and Productiondesign
Prototyping
Experimental and Animated Documentary
Music and Animation
Games |
| Asst Prof Kevin Andrew Riordan | Modernism
Theater and Performance
Theory
Comparative and World Literatures
Cinema |
| Prof Kingsley Bolton | Professor Bolton's research interests include English in Asia, English in higher education, language and media, the sociolinguistics of globalization, world Englishes, and other related topics. His publications include fifteen books (edited and authored), five journal special issues, and seventy journal articles and book chapters. He is Co-editor of the influential SSCI-indexed journal World Englishes (Wiley-Blackwell), founding editor of the book series Asian Englishes Today (Hong Kong University Press), and The History and Development of World Englishes (Routledge). He is also a member of the editorial board of Applied Linguistics Review, Educational Studies, English Today, English World-Wide, and the international book series Multilingual Education (Springer). He has an active and continuing publication agenda, much of which focuses on English in the Asian region and worldwide.
A number of Professors Bolton's publications can be found here, http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/kbolton/ |
| Asst Prof Koh Keng We | Asian and Comparative Business History; Maritime Trade; Southeast Asian History; Chinese Religions and Comparative Religions; Asian Migrations and Comparative Diasporas; Colonialism; Colonial Knowledge-Formation; State-formations; World History/Global History |
| Assoc Prof Kwan Sze Pui Uganda | Translation Studies (Translation History; Gender issues in cross cultural translation; Literary translation)
Comparative Modern Sino-Japanese Literature
British Sinology in the 19th Century
Hong Kong Literature |
| Asst Prof Lee Sang Joon | My current manuscript project, tentatively titled 'The Asian Film Festival and the Emergence of Transnational Cinema Network in Cold War Asia' is a book-length study on the cultural history of the Asian Film Festival. This will trace the early history of the festival and explore the ways in which cold war politics, ideology, international relations, and nationalism have shaped this regional film festival, led by the Japanese film industry, in postwar Asia, and to what extent the festival had influenced the regional film industries and cultures during its first two decades, from 1953 to 1972.
As part of my future research plans, I also plan to write a critical investigation of the Korean cinema renaissance in the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium. Instead of analyzing industrial structures or scrutinizing single/multiple texts, this project, tentatively titled 'Celluloid Korea: Cinema at the End of the Century,' will examine the particular phenomenon from the perspectives that consider manifold factors; cine-club movements, the emergence of film schools, translations and interpretations of critical theories, film journals, multiplexes, and the intellectuals’ turn to the cultural industries throughout the 1990s. I will particularly address to what extent politics, new economic conditions, social changes, and nationalism have shaped Korean screen cultures and industry throughout the past two decades.
In tandem with the above project, I am writing critical essays on contemporary practices of transnational media connections between Korea, Japan, and China, Korean popular culture and social media, and a new method of writing transnational film history that is especially important for regions linked by both cultural correspondences and political systems. |
| Asst Prof Liew Kai Khiun | 1. Transnational Popular Cultural Flows
2. Heritage Studies
3. Social media cultures
4. Singapore Studies
5. Medical Humanities |
| Asst Prof Lisa Onaga | The mass production and global export of silk commodities that made imperial Japan a formidable international power relied, in no small part, on the scientific improvement of the domesticated silk moth species, Bombyx mori. I am currently preparing a book manuscript (working title: Anatomy of a Hybrid: Cultivation of Silk and Genetics in Modern Japan”) that chronicles the Japanese pursuit of the ideal silk cocoon type in the archipelago and its role in generating biological knowledge. The material object of the scientific hybrid cocoon, a result of breeding Japanese varieties with those from China and elsewhere, stands as a focal point of the book, a history of breeding science and genetics from the late nineteenth century through the post-World War II era. Archival research in laboratory archives, libraries, and private collections in Japan, the United States, and the National Archives of Thailand inform this analysis of the tensions between scientists and stake holders in the silk industry. Together with detailed descriptions of the partner species and the shared human-animal product, this book illustrates why the creation of the scientific hybrid served as a potent site for understanding an entanglement of industrial standardization, biological race, and national identity in Japan. Through the object of the cocoon, I show that what appeared to circulate as universalized biological knowledge had a particular genealogy connected to the ancient but changing craft of silk-making and with it, changing ideologies of the state and Japan’s relation to the world. Any comprehensive historical understanding of Japanese modern biology before, during, and after empire must necessarily engage with the cocoon.
My newer research involves the history of post-war efforts to rebuild, if not rehabilitate, bioscience through efforts to preserve genetic resources at the national and global levels. By attending to postwar discussions in Japan about creating national infrastructure for “strain preservation,” I study how activities built around the infrastructure previously created for silkworm genetics gave way to a national discourse concerning “bioresource management” that set the stage for the National Bioresource Project present today. I am also working on the history of silkworm genetics in the atomic age and am interested in how scientists who experienced wartime re-initiated their mutation experiments and served positions of leadership in high-profile roundtable discussions on the effects of radiation on lifeforms in 1950s and 1960s Japan. Addition work on the communication of Mendelian thought in Meiji Japan is slated to appear in an edited volume on the topic of agriculture and genetics.
Another aspect of my research program focuses on the experiences of Asian American scientists in the biosciences and more broadly, the migration of Japanese breeding/cultivation knowledge to the Americas. I’m currently completing a journal article on the late Ray Wu, a Chinese-descent molecular biologist who played an instrumental role in the early history of DNA sequencing in the 1960s and 1970s. On tap is an ongoing project on the history of Japanese chicken sexing expertise and its relationship to eugenic science. This work will complement Nikkei studies of the diasporic experiences of expert chicken sexers before and after the exclusionary immigration policies of the United States. I am also collecting materials related to the history of ornamental fish breeding and the introduction of koi to the United States as a way to understand a phenomenon opposite of the standardized silk cocoon, which involves the cultivation and extraordinary value of individuality and difference. |
| Prof Liu Hong | Current Research Areas
• China rising and implications for Southeast Asia
• Chinese international migration, nationalism, transnationalism
• Transnational knowledge transfer and dynamic governance in the Global South (with special reference to China, Southeast Asia and Africa)
• Talent strategies and management in China and Singapore |
| Ms Marina Lewycka | My research interests are determined by what I am working on. At present I am gathering information for a novel to be based in South East Asia |
| Assoc Prof Michael John Kirk Walsh | My research falls under the umbrella term 'Conflict and Culture' and can be subdivided into three main categories:
1. British (and imperial) cultural production in the first two decades of the 20th century (especially in relation to the Great War)
2. Heritage in Conflict and Post-conflict Zones: Famagusta, Cyprus.
3. Twentieth century music biography (with an emphasis on protest and pacificism) |
| Asst Prof Miles Alexander Powell | My areas of expertise and interest include environmental history, world history, indigenous history, the history of the North American West, and U.S. history. |
| Asst Prof Nanci Takeyama | Three main research interests:
-Symbolic meaning of traditional forms in Asia
-Preservation of Asian traditional arts and crafts, heritage management
-Design for social innovation, design thinking, participatory design
Areas of professional expertise:
-Corporate Identity
-Package Design
-Typography, applied typography
-Editorial Design
-Information architecture
-Environmental Design
Important research key words:
-Meaning of symbols in Asian traditions (crafts, rituals, myths)
-Mandala
-Cosmology |
| Asst Prof Ng Woon Lam | His research interests include areas in Art Education, Scientific study of art materials, Oriental Art History and Culture, South East Asia Art, Classical Painting language in Contemporary Art and Digital Animation, Digital Painting, Design, Illustration and Fine Art.
Potential researchers, Phd / MA students may contact him directly to discuss possible research collaborations or supervision.
Looking for suitable MA students to work on Fine Art related research, focusing on colors and design |
| Asst Prof Ngoei Wen-Qing | U.S. empire and foreign relations history
Global Cold War history
Decolonization in Southeast Asia
Race and Diaspora
Comparative colonialism and nationalism |
| Asst Prof Ngoi Guat Peng | Chinese Intellectual History
Daoxue Neo-Confucianism
Religion Syncretism in late Ming
Singapore/ Malaysia History and Literature
Malay Communist and history Discourse
Literary and Citizenship |
| Asst Prof Ong Soon Keong | Chinese migration and the overseas Chinese
Modern Chinese history
Chinese urban history
Treaty ports, especially Xiamen |
| Asst Prof Park Hyung Wook | History of Biomedical Science and Medicine
History of the Body
History of Aging and Gertontology
Korean Science and Medicine |
| Dr Perono Cacciafoco Francesco | Historical Linguistics, Etymology, Diachronic Toponymy, Historical Semantics, Onomastics, Indo-European Linguistics, Language Documentation, Descriptive Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics, Austronesian and Papuan Languages, Landscape Archaeology |
| Asst Prof Qu Jingyi | Classical Chinese Literature & History from the Han through Tang periods; Literary Historiography; Western Sinology; Literature Pedagogy; Practical Writing & Socio-Culture |
| Assoc Prof Quah Sy Ren | Modern Chinese literature and culture, theatre and performance, Singapore studies.
Dr Quah is currently working on the history of Singapore theatre and social activism. |
| Asst Prof Richard Alan Barlow | James Joyce
Modernism
Scottish Literature and Philosophy
Irish Studies |
| Prof Richard Seyler Ling | I am interested in investigating the social consequences of mobile communication. This includes the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods along with the use of so-called big data to better understand how the mobile phone and mobile communication have effected social structure. |
| Asst Prof Scott Michael Anthony | Before joining NTU as an Assistant Professor in Public History I had been developing the Public History programmes at the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Historical Research, London. As a writer and researcher I have worked with organisations such as the Science Museum, the British Film Institute and British Airways to develop a variety of successful events, exhibitions and media campaigns. The ambition has been (and remains) to bring the work of enthusiasts, researchers and practitioners together and apply it in creative, productive and unpredictable ways.
My historical research deals with the inter-relationships between art, politics and technology. My book Public Relations and the Making of Modern Britain (MUP, 2012) examined how the emergence of so-called second industrial revolution technologies (agri-science, aviation and telecommunications) provided the bureaucratic, imaginative and demographic bedrock for the development of an Empire-wide ‘public relations movement’, a movement which pioneered innovative new media practices alongside theories about the social and industrial role of information between the First World War and mid-twentieth century. I am currently working on a book about the ways in which knowledge has been visualised since the turn of the twentieth century. |
| Assoc Prof Stephen Teo Kian Teck | Associate Professor Stephen Teo's current research work focuses on several aspects of theoretical interest in film. Firstly, contributing to the discourse on Asian Cinema as an alternative paradigm to Hollywood as the global form, and thus to evolve a concept of Asian Cinema as a viable cinematic and media theory supporting pedagogical and creative modules. Asian cinema and the concept of national cinema are inter-related forces but it is the latter that tends to subsume the former in theoretical discourse. Teo's research work seeks a concentrated, rigorous approach to defining Asian cinema as a specialized norm of aesthetics and thematic field that can be broadly applied to Asian films produced by diverse national film industries in Asia. How do Asian cinemas transcend national interests and become an Asian Cinema as a unitary and unifying element? With Asian film industries modelling themselves on Hollywood,how can an Asian cinema stand up as an alternative model to Hollywood? A second area of Teo's reasearch interest revolves around the nature of film in relation to cultural theory and other fields of cultural interest, including literature, history and popular arts. The literary and visual contrast inherent in cinema is a striking anomaly that calls for more theoretical investigation. Teo's work has concerned itself with how historical literary works are transposed into the cinema and how historical prototypes are transfigured as cinematic personalities but retaining essential qualities. A third area of Teo's work lies in genre and auteur studies. Teo is interested in standard Hollywood genres such as the Western, the action-adventure film, the thriller, the epic, the musical, and he seeks to explore their inter-textual connections with Asian genres such as the martial arts film, the gangster action film, the melodrama, horror, and historical epic. How do auteurs transform genre? A fourth area of research interest lies in the study of emerging Asian "New Waves" in traditionally ignored film industries such as those in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. Can these Southeast Asian cinemas make a lasting impact on the discourse of Asian cinema? |
| Prof Tan Yew Lee, Kevin | International Law
International Human Rights
Constitutional Law & Theory
Legal History of Singapore |
| Asst Prof Van Dongen Els | History and historiography of modern China
•Historiography and national identity
•Theories of revolution and modernization
•The relation between history, historiography, and politics
Intellectual history of modern China
•The transmission and reception of concepts in China
•Thinkers, intellectual currents, and “isms” of the 1980s and 1990s
•Manifestations of conservatism in Europe, the United States, and China
Nationalism, transnationalism, and national identity
•Conceptions of the Chinese nation
•Migration, the nation-state, and nationalism
•Government policies towards diaspora communities in comparative perspective (China and India) |
| Asst Prof Yin Ker | Yin Ker works on narratives of art beyond the Euramerican canon, in particular, images classified as "Buddhist art" and artistic productions from South and Southeast Asia. To further her understanding of art, the artist and the history of art in these areas as variable constructs, she is currently examining the historiography of art in modern times, as well as ancient notions of material culture labelled as "art" today. She is keen to rethink art beyond the dichotomies of the pre-modern versus the modern, the sciences versus the fine arts, and spiritual experience versus scientific thinking, for example. |
| Assoc Prof Yow Cheun Hoe | Chinese overseas and Chinese diaspora;
Relations between Chinese overseas and China;
Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia;
Qiaoxiang(ancestral homeland)areas in China, particularly Guangdong and Wenzhou;
Chinese education in Southeast Asia;
Chinese writers and their works in Southeast Asia;
New Chinese migrants in Singapore;
Chinese business networks;
Transnationalism. |
| Dr Zeliha Gul Inanc | Contemporary Religious Art and Architecture
Intercultural Education for Peace and Conflict Resolution
Cultural Heritage Education
Refugee Studies- Higher Education Access for the Refugee Youth |
| Dr Zhao Yan | Research Interest
Basic research
The main emphasis of our research is focused on deciphering the signal transduction pathways of drug resistance and apoptosis as it pertains to in cancer biology. Using novel (TCM herbal extracts) and established chemotherapeutic agents we are currently working on the signal transduction pathways that are crucial for inducing apoptosis in cancer cells. The role of histone deacetylase, prenylation, methylation and acetylation inhibitors are currently being investigated as therapeutic agents in the treatment of a variety of cancers. In addition, putative proto-oncogenic transcription factors, like those of Kruppel-like family of transcription factors are being investigated for their role in tumorgenesis. In trying to decipher signal transduction pathways, we are currently in the process of establishing a first order transcriptional network for these transcription factors. In conjunction with expression profile analysis, we also make use of shRNA libraries, HTS (high-throughput screening) and global transcription factor binding site analysis to answer some of the basic biology underlying drug resistance and apoptosis.
TCM research
Anti-cancer effects of extracts prepared from Chinese herbal medicines
Anti-diabetic effects of extracts prepared from Chinese herbal medicines.
Toxicity and pharmacokinetic studies on herbal extracts.
Established in vivo models for senile dementia and ischemia-reperfusion on rats.
Patho-physiological studies on a new TCM therapy for senile dementia.
Mechanistic studies on ischemia-reperfusion injury. |
| Asst Prof Zhou Taomo | Modern Southeast Asian History, Modern Chinese History, Migration, International Communist Movement, Cold War, International Relations. |
| Assoc Prof (Adj) Zhou Zhaocheng | His research area includes history and politics of Singapore, China-Southeast Asian relationship and media-politic relationship. |
