Events

This workshop is organised by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore; with support from MOE Tier 2 Grant – Heat in Urban Asia: Past, Present, and Future.

The Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Cluster in the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at National University of Singapore (NUS) will host the workshop Heat in Urban Asia: Past, Present, and Future in April, 2021. This is the first academic workshop or conference to consider the phenomenon of heat in urban Asia from a social science and humanities perspective, though one also informed by research in the physical sciences, and with an eye to policy recommendations. Selected papers from the conference will be published in at least one special issue of a prominent international refereed journal.

The workshop is part of a larger project of the same name, funded by a Tier 2 grant from Singapore’s Ministry of Education. It has three thematic parts, namely:

Taking the City’s Temperature: The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, and the influence of city planning, design, and infrastructure-building on its escalation or mitigation. This includes the history, theory, and social impact of urban temperature-recording; universal vs. local definitions of heat and their implications; and the role and presence of Asian cities in the theorization of urban heat across a range of disciplines and professions.

Living with Heat: Documenting and theorizing Asian Thermal Cultures. This includes how Asian city dwellers have coped with the quotidian challenges of life in a hot environment; how heat exposure intersects with poverty, vulnerability, and inequality in dwellings and workplaces; heat and gender; heat and the shaping of material culture, from buildings to clothing to food & medicine, to technologies (e.g. air conditioning) to objects; and heat and national/ethnic identity.

Disastrous Heat (or, Not-Quite-Living with Heat): Documenting and theorizing extreme heat events in Asian cities. This includes the phenomenon of the Heat Wave and its construction (or absence) across cultures and borders; heat and emergency management regimes; heat as an emergent public health crisis, and differing metrics of mortality, and morbidity; and limits on adaptability to heat in an urban setting.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Yoonhee JUNG
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Assoc Prof Gregory CLANCEY
Asia Research Institute, and Department of History, National University of Singapore

Asst Prof Fiona Clare WILLIAMSON
Department of Science, Technology and Society, Singapore Management University

Assoc Prof Jiat-Hwee CHANG
Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore

EXTERNAL CONVENORS

Asst Prof Christopher J. COURTNEY
Department of History, Durham University, UK

Prof Amita BAVISKAR
Department of Environmental Studies, and Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ashoka University, India

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this workshop has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.