Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

PROGRAMME

ABSTRACT

This roundtable explores multi-directionality as a conceptual and empirical lens for rethinking the movements of people, policies, ideas, materialities, and social practices beyond extant linear, North–South or origin–destination frameworks. By placing these strands in dialogue, it considers how multidirectional flows co-constitute urban formations, citizenship regimes and everyday practices of sociality. How might attending to multidirectionality open new methodological and theoretical pathways for studying mobility, urbanism, and relational ways of being from an Asia-informed vantage point? What happens when concepts, policies, and lived experiences circulate across multiple directions, and in doing so, draw in diverse temporalities and lived experiences? The session features speakers focusing on migration, urbanism and religion, demonstrating not only how multidirectional vectors feature in these domains but also the productive intersections bridging them.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho is Provost’s Chair Professor at the Department of Geography and Research Leader of the Migration and Mobilities Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research examines the geographies of citizenship through studying various transnational migration streams as well as the ageing and well-being of non-migrant and migrant older adults. She is Editor of the journal, Social and Cultural Geography, and Routledge Series on Asian Migration. She also serves on the editorial boards of geography, citizenship, migration and area studies journals.

Beatrice Zani is an economic sociologist and an ethnographer, Associate Research Professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), currently Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. Drawing on the case study of transnational labor in the Asian fishing and shipping sectors (China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia), her ongoing research explores the link between labor and commodity mobilities, globalized labor regimes and grassroots entrepreneurship, informality and digitality in the transformation of capitalism and globalization. She is Principal Investigator of the French National Research Agency (ANR)-funded project FORSEA – “Migrations and Forced Labor in the Maritime Economies of Globalized Asia” (2026-2028).

Kenneth Dean is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Professor in Yale-NUS College, Research Cluster Leader for Religion and Globalisation in Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore (NUS), and Director of Wan Boo-Sow Centre for Chinese Culture in the Department of Chinese Studies at NUS. He is the author of several books on Taoism and popular religion in Southeast China. He has published several volumes of epigraphic sources on the history of religion in Fujian and Singapore. He directed Bored in Heaven: A Film about Ritual Sensation (2010) and has developed websites and digital platforms, including the Singapore Historical GIS and the Singapore Biographical Databases.

Tim Bunnell is Professor in the Department of Geography and Leader of the Asian Urbanisms cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. The primary focus of his research is urbanisation in Southeast Asia, examining both the transformation of cities in that region and urban connections with other parts of the world. Tim’s publications include From World City to the World in One City: Liverpool through Malay Lives (Wiley, 2016) and Urban Asias: Essays on Futurity Past and Present (Jovis, 2018; co-edited with Daniel P.S. Goh). His current research on the planning and development of Putrajaya forms part of a collaborative project titled ‘Capitals of the Future: Place, Power and Possibility in Southeast Asia’, which is supported by a Tier 2 grant from the Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund.

ABOUT THE ARI 25TH ANNIVERSARY EVENT SERIES 

Marking twenty-five years of the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore, the ARI 25th Anniversary Event Series brings together scholars, public intellectuals, and partners to examine some of the most significant current and future issues facing Asia and their wider global implications. The anniversary program comprises three events: a public lecture and two thematic roundtables, each addressing a major set of contemporary and emerging questions that intersect with ARI’s research mission and open conversations between academic research and the wider public, policy, and professional communities in Singapore, across Asia, and internationally. Together, the events showcase ARI’s role as a platform that brings research into conversation with the questions that matter to Singapore, Asia, and the wider world.