About
Growing up in Southeast Asia, I have always been fascinated by its diverse and fluid worlds. I am curious about how gender plays into the formation of race, class and empire. Apart from telling the stories of women as workers, activists and complainants, my research asks questions about the ways in which gender, colonialism and nationalism were mutually constituted in modern Malaya and Singapore. My research also straddles modern China and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia.
My PhD project is tentatively titled "Rape in the Making of Malaya: Empire, Gender and Sexual Violence in Cosmopolitan Worlds, 1871 to 1965". Through the lens of gender and sexual violence, this project aims to recast the history of modern Malaya from a male-dominated colony to a more gender-equal independent nation. I am interested in how sexual violence cases may illuminate power dynamics at the intersection of gender, class and race.
My M.A. project is titled "Fleeting Feminisms: Chinese-speaking Women Activists, the Left and Anti-Colonialism in Singapore, 1950 to 1963". Women across class and education levels, from factory women to teachers to housewives, banded together in a feminist campaign against colonial, capitalist and patriarchal society. Organizing to form the Singapore Women's Federation and People's Action Party (PAP) Women's League, they saw this women's movement as part of the overarching left-wing anti-colonial movement. Yet their feminisms could only be fleeting; they were marginalized by British anti-communist suppression, the male-led Left and misogyny from both fronts. This research sheds light into a hitherto-silenced facet of Singapore history, deepens our understanding of anti-colonial mass politics and critiques the patriarchal nature of the current historiography on decolonization in Singapore.
Outside of history, I enjoy reading fiction, ashtanga yoga and slow travel. I am always happy to chat about all things Southeast Asia, gender issues and new ways of doing history.
