Latest Articles
| 7 mins
27 Feb 2026
From citizen-led food initiatives to one of Singapore’s most biodiverse gardens, Emily Soh's research at ARI has led her into the heart of the city’s evolving food landscape.
| 5 mins
13 Jan 2026
Through a case study of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions, the legal geographies of money changers reveal how a single space can accommodate multiple, overlapping “maps” of the law.
| 7 mins
12 Dec 2025
While shared repertoires of resistance may form affective chains of reference, the under-the-same-flag discourse risks reducing diverse political struggles to a universal template of youthful rebellion.
| 7 mins
08 Nov 2025
The Suharto debate reveals a larger truth: once reputation hardens into heritage, it becomes difficult to separate memory from myth.
| 5 mins
29 Oct 2025
The relationship between Indonesia and Singapore has long oscillated between pragmatic cooperation and historical discomfort. At its heart lies the question of memory how both nations remember their shared past.
| 5 mins
16 Oct 2025
Urban design, through the creation of walkable neighborhoods and the provision of recreational spaces for instance holds the potential to promote health equity, but only when it takes into account the needs of those most affected.
| 7 mins
15 Sep 2025
Two recent dramatic characterisations of folkloric masculinity—goblin Kim Shin and nine-tailed fox Lee Yeon—challenge dominant anthropocentric portrayals of infantilised, flowery, or wealthy chaebol men in South Korean screen culture. This animistic trope raises feminist anthropological questions about the epistemic and geological foundations of subregional Anthropocene struggles.
| 7 mins
29 Aug 2025
This article explores insights from the ‘ASEAN Spice: The Connecting Cultures of Southeast Asia’ program held in Yogyakarta in May 2024. Beyond conventional narratives of spices as commodities in maritime trade, it examines how plant knowledge reflects embodied cultural practices across Southeast Asia.
| 7 mins
28 Jul 2025
Centering migrant workers’ embodied, everyday experiences reveals not only their exploitation and alienation within restrictive labour migration regimes—such as those in Taiwan—but also highlights their agency and demands a critical rethinking of how migrant labour is framed beyond sensationalist portrayals of modern slavery or trafficking.
| 7 mins
26 Jun 2025
Meme culture in China, when read critically, reveals how history is weaponised in ways that mock former colonisers, assert postcolonial confidence, and shape new forms of national identity.
| 10 mins
13 May 2025
Using remoteness as an analytic, this article analyses a recent work of Thai experimental dance, Mali Bucha, by Kornkarn Rungsawang, a performance piece that brings together traditional ritual with VR technology.
| 7 mins
23 Apr 2025
The transformation of Geumho-Haengdang-Hawangsimni illustrates the impact of market-driven urban redevelopment on marginalised neighbourhoods in Seoul. In the early 1990s, the area was among the largest shantytowns in central Seoul. Its origins date back to the rapid industrialisation of the city.