Global Indo-Pacific Global Mobility Fellowship

Research Fellows

Name Affiliation & Institution Online Profile Page Fellowship Location Fellowship Period Project Idea
Yannis-Adam Allouache Postdoctoral Fellow, ARI Profile German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ - Tokyo), Japan Sep – Oct 2026 Dr Allouache's project builds on long-term research on Taiwan, bringing labour and urban political ecology frameworks to examine archipelagic and oceanic geographies, as well as the Indo-Pacific extractive frontier.
Chen Xiaoling Postdoctoral Fellow, ARI Profile German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ - Tokyo), Japan Sep – Oct 2026 Dr Chen's current book project, Zero-COVID: Infrastructure and State Power in Contemporary China, examines the reconfiguration of economic, political, public security, public services, and grassroots organizations in China’s COVID-19 containment. At ARI, Xiaoling studies China’s extraterritorial governance and the post-COVID lived experiences of Chinese living abroad (e.g., Singapore, Japan), addressing the intersection of Global China, infrastructure, and civil society.
Arnab Dutta Lecturer, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Profile German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ - Tokyo), Japan Jul 2026 Titled The Indo-Pacific Knowledge in Indian Anticolonialism: Emergent Geopolitical Imaginaries from Pan-Asianism to the Pacific Affairs, 1920s–40s, Dr Dutta’s research reconstructs the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical concept within Indian anticolonial thought, situating Indian engagements with the Pacific in a wider transnational history of spatial imagination and political geography.
Thomas Kaal Researcher, German Historical Institute London Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore 20 Apr – 19 May 2026 Dr Kaal's project focuses on late medieval religious cultures, with interest in ritual music and soundscapes. Explores the importance of the Indo-Pacific region for study of religious sound in non-modern contexts, including medieval European imaginaries of religious practices in Asia and modern scholarly approaches such as “acoustemology”.
Mallika Leuzinger Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore 24 Apr – 31 May 2026 Dr Leuzinger's project Photographs and the Making of History: Case Studies from Singapore explores how photographs produce—and puncture—the historical imagination, surveying heritage initiatives. Broader project examines transformation of history, rise of “citizen archives”, “picture libraries” and “memory projects”. 
Felix Lüttge Research Fellow in Colonial and Global History, German Historical Institute London Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore Mar – Apr 2026 Project, Excavation and Notation: A History of the Archaeological Record, 1890–1980, investigates sites, objects, and subjects of archaeological knowledge produced by notation systems and paper technologies, examining media history of changing archaeological conceptions.
Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus Senior Researcher, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ Tokyo), Japan Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore 8th Feb – 8th March 2026 Transforming Empire: Japanese Technical Assistance and Education in Postwar Asia. This project asks how Japan's postwar development assistance — particularly in education and technical training — was shaped by its colonial past, Cold War pressures, and its own self-image as a modern, technologically advanced nation. I examine the ideas, institutions, and people that carried Japanese development visions into the Indo-Pacific region, and how recipient countries engaged with, adapted, or resisted those visions. Japan's postwar trajectory offers a distinctive case in global development history: a non-Western country that was simultaneously a former colonizer, a Cold War ally of the United States, and a rapidly industrializing economy held up as a model for others. Understanding how Japan projected that model abroad sheds light on the entanglement of colonial legacies, modernization ideologies, and geopolitics that continues to shape Asia today. As a Visiting Scholar at the Asia Research Institute, I am particularly interested in how Japan was perceived as a model within the frameworks of the "Learn from Japan" campaign in Singapore and the “Look East Policy” in Malaysia during the 1980s.
Aditya Ramesh Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian and Environmental History, University of Washington, Seattle Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore 25 May – 14 Jul 2026 Finishing manuscript Landscape to Hydroscape: Dam, Delta, and the Making of Modernity in South India. Research focuses on industrial history of postcolonial India’s coastline, fishers, and capital flows across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Gulf.
Tanya Talwar Postdoctoral Researcher, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Profile Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies Delhi (MWF Delhi) Aug – Oct 2026 Research examines developments in art education in colonial South Asia from transregional and transcultural perspectives. Extends from doctoral thesis on Schools of Industrial Arts in Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, and Lahore, and their entanglements with aesthetic pedagogy and artistic/artisanal forms of making.
Phill Wilcox Research Associate, Bielefeld University Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore 1 Aug – 1 Sep 2026 Focus on Global China, development and infrastructure, particularly in and around Southeast Asia.
Zezhou Yang Postdoctoral Fellow, ARI Profile German Historical Institute, London Jun 2026 Examines how modern Chinese intellectuals attempted to decolonise geography-based knowledge of the Nepali Himalayas in the early and mid-20th century, reflecting on contemporary debates on decolonisation of knowledge production in China and implications for the Global South. Broader interests include South Asia–China history, trans-Himalayan studies, Inter-Asia cultural studies, and Gaming Asia.
Dalu Zhong Ph.D. candidate, Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore Jun – Aug 2026 Project examines the global entanglements and intellectual history of the Sino-Burma borderlands during the Second World War. Broader research interests include Sinophone literature, memory and heritage studies, and historical anthropology in the early twentieth century.
Julian zur Lage Postdoctoral Fellow, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany Profile Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore Sep 2026 Global historian studying circulation of people, goods and knowledge. Conducting postdoctoral project on The Migration of the “Others”: German Shipping, (Coerced) Migration and Labor in the 19th Century Indo-Pacific, investigating concepts of the Indo-Pacific avant la lettre and archival research on shipping and migration.

Research node on the Global Indo-Pacific: Connecting Histories and Futures