Research

At NTU Sociology, our faculty work on a wide range of research, addressing topics such as migration, citizenship, welfare regimes and social policies, the climate crisis, ethnic relations, the changing face of religiosity, shifts in family forms, aging, mental health, pop culture, digital media, and the social dimensions of science and technological shifts.  

Trained as sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers, our projects draw from a rich range of theoretical traditions and are grounded in diverse empirical approaches and sites. Many projects are interdisciplinary, collaborative, and address urgent social, economic, and political issues of Singapore, the region and beyond.

Recent and ongoing projects include:

Francis Lim
● 2021-2022, Responses Of Local Communities to Covid19: Exploring Issues Of Trust In The Context Of Risk And Fear
● 2020-2022, Gods on Earth: Vernacular Shrines, Religious Heritage and Community Formation in Singapore

Ian McGonigle
● 2020 onward, Comparative Covid Response: Crisis, Knowledge, Policy
● 2020-2022, COVID-19 and Racisim: Preventing Discrimination in the Age of Precision Medicine
● 2018-2022, The Molecularization of Identity: Science and Nation Building in the 21st Century

Ian Rowen
● 2017 onward, Innovation, Ideology, And Translingual Practice: Exploring Governmental, Industrial, And Academic  Networks In Greater China, Singapore And The US

Jung Jong Hyun
● 2018-2022, Religion and Mental Health among North Korean Defectors in South Korea
● 2021 onward, Religion, Demands and Resources in Work, and Worker Well-Being in Singapore

Kamaludeen Nasir
● 2020-2024, Islam and Social Theory
● 2017-2021, Malay National Identity in Malaysia and Singapore
● 2015-2020, Young Muslims and Popular Culture

Kwok Kian Woon
● 2019-2021, Mental health literacy, help-seeking, peer support, and anti-stigma intervention
● 2017-2020, Social and psychological factors in underground work environments 

Laavanya Kathiravelu
● 2019-2024, Does Citizenship matter? Second generation immigrant integration in Singapore and Qatar
● 2019-2022, Integrating Regulatory Migrant Perspectives of Sewage Surveillance in Singapore
● 2020-2023, Translating Race and Anti-Racism 

Lee Hyo Jung
● 2018-2021, Let's talk about dying, mom: A pilot study on good death, family conversation, and advance care planning in the US and Singapore

Md Saidul Islam
● 2020-2022, Certification regimes and the rise of the ‘modernization of ecology
● 2018-2021, The rise of the ‘green’ movements in global environmental politics

● 2018-2021, Climate change and neoliberal governmentality

Patrick Williams 
● 2020-2022, Developing knowledge and skills relevant to future careers in the knowledge-based digital economy through participation in esports
● 2020-2022, Interpreting Subcultures: Sense-making from Insider and Outsider Perspectives
● 2021-2022, Subculture and the Rise of Digital Media

Premchand Dommaraju
● 2018-2021, Understanding Changes in the Marriage Systems in Southeast Asia: A Cross National Comparative Approach
● 2018-2021, Changing Expectations of Old Age Support: Implications for Intergenerational Solidarity in Singapore and China 

Shannon Ang
● 2021-2024, Longitudinal and cross-national analyses of older adults’ social connectedness
● 2021-2024, An examination of social participation and health among older adults in Singapore using two nationally representative surveys

Shirley Sun
● 2020-2022, Biomedical Reports and Social Diversity: the Case of Covid-19
● 2020-2022, Improving prescribing: A feasibility study of pharmacogenetic testing with clinical decision support in the primary health care setting in Singapore
● 2018-2021, Addressing Social Issues in Precision Medicine: Comparing Singapore, the USA and Canada

Stephen Campbell
● 2020-2023, Everyday ethnic relations in Myanmar’s mining sector
● 2018-2020, Structuring class relations in a Myanmar squatter settlement

Sulfikar Amir
● 2020-2023, Cool Infrastructures: Life with Heat in the Off-Grid City
● 2021-2024, State Politics and Covid-19 Mitigation in Southeast Asia
● 2019-2022 City Resilience in Expanding Urbans of Southeast Asia 

Tan Joo Ean
● 2013-2022 Never-married women in Bangkok and Jakarta
● 2015-2022 Teaching undergraduate research methods  

Teo You Yenn
● 2019-2021, What people need in Singapore: A household budgets study
● 2018-2021, Work-life balance in contemporary Singapore: cross-class comparisons 

Ye Junjia
● 2019-2022, Migrant-Driven Diversification Through Differential Inclusion in Singapore
● 2017-2021, The Global City of Differential Inclusion: Migration and Diversification in Asian Urbanism
● 2020, Singapore’s surveillance experiments on low-wage migrant worker dormitories: Implications for Singapore and other nations 

Zhan Shaohua
● 2016-2021, Internal Spatial Fix And Grain Production In China: National Policy, Local Processes And Global Implications
● 2020-2023, A New Food Regime?: Investigating the Impacts of China’s Rise on Food Security in Southeast Asia
● 2018-2022, Changing Expectations of Old Age Support: Implications for Intergenerational Solidarity in Singapore and China

Francis Lim
● Lim, Francis K.G., and Bee Bee Sng. 2021. Christianity and Social Engagement in Contemporary China. London and New York: Routledge.
● Lim, Francis K.G. 2020 (editor). New Developments in Christianity in China. Basel: MDPI.
● Lim, Francis K.G., and Bee Bee Sng. 2020 ‘Social Media, Religion and Shifting Boundaries in Globalizing China’, Global Media and China 5(3).

Ian McGonigle
● McGonigle, I. (2021) Genomic Citizenship: The Molecularization of Identity in the Contemporary Middle East. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
● Vimal, M., W.P. Devi, and I. McGonigle (IN PRESS) GenomeAsia100K: Singapore Builds National Science with Asian DNA. East Asian Science, Technology and Society
● Pandian, S., S. Jolly, and I. McGonigle (2021) ‘Singapore Country Report,’ In S. Jasanoff et al. (Eds), 84-88. Comparative Covid Response: Crisis, Knowledge, Politics: Interim Report. New York: Schmidt Futures.

Ian Rowen
● Rowen, I. 2020. The transformational festival as a subversive toolbox for a transformed tourism: lessons from Burning Man for a COVID-19 world. Tourism Geographies. 22(3), 695-702.
● Rowen, I. 2020. Crafting “The Taiwan Model” for COVID-19: An exceptional state in pandemic territory. The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. 18(14).
● Rowen, I. 2021. Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror. Cambria Press.

Jung Jong Hyun
● Kim, Harris Hyun-soo, and Jong Hyun Jung. 2021. “Social Isolation and Psychological Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-National Analysis.” The Gerontologist. 61(1): 103–113.
● Jung, Jong Hyun. 2020. "Belief in Hell and Parenting Priorities Concerning Child Independence and Obedience: Does Economic Context Matter?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 59(4): 629-645.
● Jung, Jong Hyun 2020. "Does Religious Bonding Moderate the Association between Divine Struggles and Depressive Symptoms among Married Adults?” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. 12(3): 376-386.

Kamaludeen Nasir
● Humairah Zainal and Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir. Forthcoming (2021). The Primordial Modernity of Malay Nationality: Contemporary Identity in Malaysia and Singapore.
● Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir. 2020. Representing Islam: Hip-Hop of the September 11 Generation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
● Sam Han and Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir. 2016. Digital Culture and Religion in Asia. London: Routledge.

Laavanya Kathiravelu
● Kathiravelu, L., (2020) “Bodies that don’t matter, but labour that does: The low wage male migrant in Singapore and Dubai” in Natalie Boero and Kate Mason (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of the Body and Embodiment,1-17. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
● Kathiravelu, L., (2020) “What kind of Indian are you? Frictions and fractures between Singaporean Indians and foreign-born NRIs”. In Terence Chong (ed) Navigating Differences: Integration in Singapore, 110-125. Singapore: ISEAS (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) Press.
● Ho, E., Kathiravelu, L, Forthcoming (2021) “More than race: a comparative analysis of “new” Indian and Chinese migration in Singapore, Race and Ethnic Studies.

Lee Hyo Jung
● Lee, H. J., Small, B. J., & Haley, W. E. (2020). Health and well-being in the year before death: Association with end-of-life quality of life and care. Journal of Aging and Health, 32(10), 1475-1485.
● Lee, H. J., Kim, K., Bangerter, L. R., Zarit, S. H., & Fingerman, K. L. (2020). Gaps in evaluations of aging parents’ problems between aging parents and their middle-aged children. Journal of Adult Development, 27(2), 135-146.

Md Saidul Islam
● Islam, Md Saidul and Edson Kieu. 2021. Climate Change and Food Security in Asia Pacific: Response and Resilience. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
● Kais, S. M. and Md Saidul Islam. 2021. “Resilience to Climate Change in Industrial Shrimping in Bangladesh: Assessing the Comparative Role of the Stakeholders” Sustainability 13(307):1-21.
● Islam, Md Saidul. 2014. Confronting the Blue Revolution: Industrial Aquaculture and Sustainability in the Global South. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press.

Patrick Williams
● Williams, J. Patrick, and Victoria Puay Ru Chua. 2021. “Conventional Culture, Subcultural Institutions and Subcultural Careers as Backdrops to Identity Work in Singapore's Esports Scene.” In Tyler Dupont and Becky Beal (eds.) Lifestyle Sport and Identity: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
● Scott, M.J., Summerley, R., Besombes, N., Connolly, C., Gawrysiak, J., Halevi, T., Jenny, S., Miljanovic, M., Stange, M., Taipalus, T., and Williams, J.P. 2021. “Towards a Framework to Support the Design of Esports Curricula in Higher Education.” ITiCSE ’21: Proceedings of the Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education.
● Williams, J. Patrick. 2020. “Myth and Authenticity in Subculture Studies.” Pp. 35-53 in Bart van der Steen and Thierry Verburgh (eds.) Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Premchand Dommaraju
● Dommaraju, Premchand. 2019. Living Alone in India: Gender and Policies. Global Social Security Review 11: 50–59.  ­
● Visaria, Abhijit and Premchand Dommaraju. 2019. Productive Aging in India. Social Science & Medicine 229: 14–21. 

● Dommaraju, Premchand. 2016. Divorce and Separation in India. Population and Development Review 42(2): 195–223.

Shannon Ang
● Ang, Shannon, Emily Lim, and Rahul Malhotra. Forthcoming. “Health-related difficulty in internet use among older adults: Correlates and mediation of its association with quality of life through social support networks.” The Gerontologist. 
● Ang, Shannon. 2021. “Your friends, my friends, and our family: Informal social participation and mental health through the lens of linked lives.” Social Science and Medicine.

● Ang, Shannon and Tuo-Yu Chen. 2019. “Going online to stay connected: Online social participation buffers the relationship between pain and depression” Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences.

Shirley Sun
● Sun, Shirley, and Ann Hui Ching. Forthcoming. “Social Systems Matter: Precision Medicine, Public Health and the Medical Model” East Asian Science, Technology and Society.
● Sun, Shirley. (2020). “Between Personalized and Racialized Precision Medicine: A Relative Resources Perspective.” International Sociology, 35(1), 90-110.

● Sun, Shirley. 2017. Socio-economics of Personalized Medicine in Asia. London and New York: Routledge OPEN ACCESS. 

Stephen Campbell 
● Campbell, Stephen. 2020. “Debt collection as labour discipline: The work of finance in a Myanmar squatter settlement.” Social Anthropology 28(3): 729-742.
● Campbell, Stephen. 2019. “Rendering assemblage dialectical.” Anthropological Theory (online first).
● Campbell, Stephen. 2018. Border Capitalism, Disrupted: Precarity and Struggle in a Southeast Asian Industrial Zone. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Sulfikar Amir
● Teo, B. and Amir, S., 2021. Contesting Relations of Definition: Climate Risk and Subpolitics in Singapore. Environmental Sociology, pp.1-14.
● Sovacool, B.K., Hess, D.J., Amir, S., Geels, F.W., Hirsh, R., Medina, L.R., Miller, C., Palavicino, C.A., Phadke, R., Ryghaug, M. and Schot, J., 2020. Sociotechnical agendas: Reviewing future directions for energy and climate research. Energy Research & Social Science, 70, p.101617.
● Tantri, F. and Amir, S., 2019. Modeling a Simulation for Sociotechnical Resilience. Complexity, 2019.

Teo You Yenn
● Teo, Youyenn. Forthcoming (2021). "From public sociology to collective knowledge production." In Routledge International Handbook on Public Sociology, edited by Leslie Hossfeld, Brooke Kelly and Cassius Hossfeld. London; New York: Routledge.
● Ng, Kok-Hoe, Yu-Wei Neo, Youyenn Teo, Ad Maulod, and Yi-Ting Ting. 2020. “Measuring needs and setting standards in Singapore.” Pp. 83-96 in Minimum Income Standards and Reference Budgets: International and Comparative Policy Perspectives, edited by Christopher Deeming. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

● Teo, You Yenn. 2018. This is What Inequality Looks Like. Singapore: Ethos Books. 

Ye Junjia
● Ye, J. Forthcoming. “Ordering Diversity: Co-Producing the Pandemic and the Migrant in Singapore during Covid-19”, Antipode.
● Ye, J. 2019. “Reorienting urban diversity and coexistence: interrogating inclusion and difference in public space” in Progress in Human Geography.

● Ye, J. and Yeoh, B.S.A. 2018. “Encountering difference through social assistance: migration, diversity and precarity in Singapore” in Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 

Zhan Shaohua
● Shaohua Zhan. 2020. “The Land Question in 21st Century China: Four Camps and Five Scenarios.” New Left Review, 122, 115-133.
● Shaohua Zhan, Rajiv Aricat and Min Zhou. 2020. “New dynamics of multinational migration: Chinese and Indian migrants in Singapore and Los Angeles.” Geographical Research, Vol.58, No.4, 365-376.