Past Events
CSSI Director, A/P Teo You Yenn was invited to speak on a panel, titled ‘Community and the Market’ at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) Singapore Perspectives 2025 Conference. In her speech, Prof Teo explored why we value community and the virtues it embodies. For corporations to be committed to caring about community, these virtues must be part of everyday practices and not just peripheral and relegated to occasional volunteer or charitable activities. Read her full speech here.
Strengthening the understanding of inequality requires research methodologies and expertise from various fields. CSSI is privileged to have the support of a distinguished Advisory Board that draws from academia, the social sector, civil society, and the arts. We have also built an excellent network of Associates from across Singapore’s universities and multiple disciplines, including Economics, Education, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Social Work, Sociology, and Urban Planning.
In February 2025, we hosted two networking lunches for our Advisory Board members and Associates.
CSSI co-organised the 2025 Population Association of Singapore (PAS) Annual Meeting on 15-16 May 2025. Themed ‘Demography and Inequality: intersecting Paths’, the two-day event provided opportunity for scholars from around the region to consider how inequality shapes or is shaped by demographic trends.
Technological and healthcare advancements in recent decades have led to longer life expectancies, with opportunities for many to reap the benefits of living longer, better lives. Yet, these benefits have been unequally distributed across regions and social groups due to the climate crisis, concentration of wealth, and political polarisation. Alongside the changing patterns of family formation, familial structures and in many contexts, rapidly ageing populations, there are new configurations of social inequalities.
Analyses of global, regional or country-specific population characteristics and trends can provide insights into unequal human wellbeing. Studies of demographic patterns also have the potential to inform understanding of how inequality intersects with fertility, health and mortality, family composition and migration. Comparative evidence can provide ideas for how public policies can enhance greater equality.
CSSI Director, A/P Teo You Yenn, delivered the opening keynote address, where she urged scholars to see inequality not just in terms of narrow outcomes, but as a feature of social life that has wide-ranging implications. She remarked that inequality affects not just marginalised groups but all of society. Inequality shapes how ordinary people live, feel, see, and act in the world. Seeing inequality as context can deepen understanding of demographic trends such as low fertility. In closing, A/P Teo encouraged young scholars in particular to be open to research from various disciplines and curious about the various ways people respond to the conditions of inequality. Read her speech here.
PAS Conference Parallel Sessions brought together scholars from around the region to consider how demographic trends are shaped by and shapes inequality.
CSSI kickstarted our Seminar Series in July 2025 with our first guest speaker, Associate Professor Marco Garrido from the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Titled ‘The Spatial Organisation of Inequality’, Prof Garrido highlighted the importance of being attentive to the spatial organisation of inequality. Using the cases of Metro Manila and Singapore, he showed how social and spatial boundaries reinforce each other to shape experiences and perceptions of inequality.
CSSI Associate, Dr Ng Kok Hoe, Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, served as discussant at the Seminar. Dr Ng offered an incisive discussion of the different ways space delineates social groupings within public housing estates in Singapore.
Together with the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at NTU, CSSI hosted a talk by CSSI Associate, Associate Professor Walid Jumblatt Abdullah. Titled after his book, ‘Why Palestine: Reflections from Singapore’, A/P Walid traced the development of the conflict in Palestine. He showed how the issue is characterised by extreme political inequality, in which the dehumanisation of Palestinians in the media and by politicians were pronounced well before October 2023. A/P Walid also showed how religion has been used by different actors to justify their actions. He also dedicated some time to speaking about how different individuals and groups in Singapore have responded to this conflict and ongoing humanitarian crisis, and the ways in which things have shifted in recent times.
During the Q&A segment, moderated by Politics, Philosophy and Economics major, Andrea Seah, the audience was forthcoming with questions, ranging from the role of major state powers in the conflict, to how activism has evolved around the issue. A/P Walid’s candid responses created opportunities for nuanced conversations.
On October 2-3, 2025, we gathered CSSI Associates and other colleagues to share ongoing research and ideas for future projects. Colleagues presented projects on a wide range of topics—education, climate and the built environment, politics, mental health, migration, and more. Drawing from the multidisciplinary expertise of participants, we discussed how different theoretical and methodological approaches enrich our collective knowledge about inequality and its workings.
An important part of CSSI’s work lies in strengthening the community of scholars working on inequality in Singapore. This event provided space for people to meet and connect, to exchange views on the challenges and opportunities of working on an urgent social problem, and to discuss how to do socially-engaged scholarship.
Together with Dialogue Centre, CSSI co-organised the book launch of Fighting Polarisation: Shared Communicative Spaces in Divided Democracies (Polity Press, 2025), by Professor Cherian George.
Around the world, intensifying inequalities have led to the deepening of social divides. Polarisation has consumed democracies, trapping citizens in uncompromisingly opposing camps. Yet, there remain people around the world who refuse to give up on the democratic promise of a larger “we”. Professor Cherian George’s book documents these efforts at creating spaces for dialogue amidst disagreement and conflict. At the launch, Professor George discussed how his fieldwork reveals lessons for creating innovative media and communicative spaces that allow groups who may have profound disagreements to engage in civil dialogue.
Held at The Foundry, a social impact hub, the launch was attended by an enthusiastic audience of more than a hundred people, including academics, students, journalists, and other members of the public.