Note: ARI is hiring in the following clusters for 2025/26 only.

1. The Asian Urbanisms cluster supports work addressing urban questions and challenges in Asia, and in comparative relation to other world regions. The overall orientation of the cluster is towards critical humanities and social science research that advances both urban theory and contextual understanding. This is built around an intertwining of three main research strands: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/clusters/asian-urbanisms/

In the current round of recruitment, we seek scholars working on the politics or political economy of urban development with respect to one or more of the cluster’s main research strands. We particularly welcome applicants whose research toolkits include computational, digital or visual methods.

2. The Food Politics and Society cluster is an interdisciplinary forum where interested scholars explore the dynamic impact of food and food systems at multiple levels--individual, household, community, society, national and international. The cluster welcomes diverse methodological approaches, from deploying ethnographic and archival skills to using visual and textual tools, as well as leveraging quantitative datasets. Open to examination of contemporary developments and historical trajectories, the empirical locus of the cluster’s food scholarship privileges Asia, an incredibly rich laboratory in which to study the intersections among power relations, vested interests, complex networks, and contested meanings of food that permeate our past, present and future lives.

The Cluster’s three main strands of research are as follows:
(i) Power, Politics, and Policy
(ii) Production, Consumption, and Technology
(iii) Historical Legacies and Meaning

3. The Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Cluster concentrates on the relationship between those three domains in and beyond Asian settings, and their intersections with the environment in the past, present and future.

In the current round of recruitment, we welcome applications across a broad range of subjects and themes, but are particularly interested in further developing the following research themes:
i) climate change and carbon governance;
ii) planetary health and ‘Asian medicines’;
iii) energy transitions, infrastructure and space;
iv) critical minerals.

Candidates with research interests at the intersection of STS and environmental humanities are especially encouraged to apply. The cluster welcomes diversity in methodological approaches, fosters interdisciplinary practices and encourages collaborative research projects.