Note: ARI is hiring in the following clusters for 2026/27 only.

1. The Migration and Mobilities cluster was formerly known as the Asian Migration Cluster which became part of the Asia Research Institute around 2003. In 2025, the name of the cluster was formally expanded to encapsulate the wider range of migration and mobilities research that has come to characterise its work. The Migration and Mobilities cluster maintains research interest in a broad range of human migrations, mobilities and interconnectivities within and beyond Asia.

The cluster has four priority research themes:

(i) The first focuses on the material processes and discourses of globalisation and transnationalism as they intersect in Asian cities. This includes exploring new knowledge frameworks through which to understand the complex and diverse linkages between global change and transnational migration in cities of diversity.

(ii) The second research theme investigates the relationship between human aspiration, migration and development in Southeast Asia, with a focus on the development impact of migration in sending communities as well as the costs and risks of migration for the poor.

(iii) A third research theme highlights the organisation and constitution of transnational (im)mobility as a means of (re)conceptualising different mobile practices, temporalities and rationalities that characterise both human and non-human movement and flow. This theme gives weight to the role of migration brokerage and migration infrastructure in organizing and facilitating human mobility, as well as the diverse mobility systems that structure the movement of people alongside material objects and ideas, thereby shaping social practices on the ground.

(iv) Our fourth theme examines the nexus between transnational migration, health and wellbeing, giving special consideration to how these mutually constitutive processes are experienced by migrants and non-migrants relationally in domains such as ageing, care work and food (in)security.

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:

1. Power, Politics, and Policy
2. Production, Consumption, and Technology
3. Historical Legacies and Meaning

3. The Inter-Asia Engagementscluster brings together researchers who examine Asia in terms of a range of historical and contemporary connections. This includes thematic investigation of both connections within Asia, and engagements with other parts of the world. Key examples from existing and future work in the cluster include Arabia-Asia connections, the north-south corridor from Central Asia, to Northeast Asia, and to Southeast Asia, connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, Asia-Africa, and Asia-Europe.

In the current round of recruitment, we are particularly interested in further developing the following research themes:

1. museum theory and digital technologies;
2. environmental and social justice;
3. oceanic paradigms of history, policy and statecraft;
4. heritage futures and heritage diplomacy; and
5. Arabia-Asia connections.

The cluster fosters diversity in approaches, actively welcomes methodological innovation (e.g. through the use of digital methods), and seeks synergies through interdisciplinary practices in encouraging collective research projects.

4. 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:

1. climate change and carbon governance;
2. energy transitions, infrastructure, and space;
3. extractivism, supply chains, and environments;
4. planetary health and ‘Asian medicines’.

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.