AGSF Students
The Asian Graduate Student Fellowship (AGSF) brings together graduate students working on Southeast Asia with the aim of sharing knowledge and nurturing the next generation of scholars. Many graduates of this programme have gone on to undertake postdoctoral research fellowships at ARI, faculty appointments in NUS and other university departments around the world. Learn more about our student fellows and their research projects through the years here.
Aileen RONDILLA
Aileen Rondilla is a PhD (Anthropology) student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her career combines applied research and management consulting with part-time teaching. She has a BA and MA degree in Anthropology. Since 2008, she has engaged business organisations, management practitioners, and government agencies as an ethnographer. Her projects have investigated varied life worlds, consumption patterns, and service delivery systems, inspiring her thesis on the "charming eyes" of Metro Manila department store salesladies and how gender performance contributes to cultural mobility. From her diverse experience she has developed a framework for a holistic understanding of enterprises and business organisations for her doctoral research.
Amado GUINTO JR
Amado Guinto Jr is pursuing his PhD (Comparative Literature) at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His research interests include Philippine folklore, theater and performance, translation, and literature. He has two bachelor’s degrees (Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and Bachelor of Arts in English) and a Master of Arts in English Language Studies from the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) where he now teaches Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies. His theater experience includes acting and dancing in several national and international tours and theater festivals which have contributed largely to his theater discipline and scholarship.
Ara Joy PACOMA
Ara Joy Pacoma is a PhD candidate at Chulalongkorn University and a research associate at Stockholm Environment Institute Asia. Her work focuses on climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, resilience, and adaptive governance. Ara holds a B.Soc.Sci. in Political Science (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College, and an MA in Political Science from the University of San Jose-Recoletos.
Chen RAMOS
Chen Ramos is a PhD (History) candidate at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He also holds a Master of Arts in History from De La Salle University, Manila. He currently teaches history at De La Salle University and San Beda University in Manila. He was the lead writer and historical consultant for the heritage conservation and restoration project of the La Loma Catholic Cemetery, one of the oldest general cemeteries in Manila, Philippines.
Gayun JANG
Gayun Jang is pursuing her PhD in Global Education Cooperation at Seoul National University. Her research interests include education in Southeast Asia, international development, Indonesia, women and gender. Her dissertation is titled “Lives of Female Teachers in Traditional Islamic Educational Institutions: Case Study of Pesantren in Aceh, Indonesia” and her field work is funded by Seoul National University Asia Center. She is currently working on a literature review of female teachers in Islamic societies with her supervisor and plans to write on women in traditional Islamic educational institutions with local researchers.
Haosheng DUAN
Haosheng Duan is a PhD candidate in the MAIDS-GRID Programme of the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. Duan, of Bai ethnic background, comes from China’s Yunnan Province, Kunming City, and has abundant experience living in the Mekong region, such as Yunnan, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. He is multilingual in Chinese, Tai, Bai languages, Pali-Sanskrit, and English. His research interests include Development Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, International Relations, and Religious Studies. He has published in international journals and media, such as Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao and Thailand’s Bangkok Post.
Jiying (Jeanny) HUANG
Jiying (Jeanny) Huang is a MPhil student in the Gender Studies Programme of the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include feminist and sociological theory, gender and ageing, and sexual harassment. Her dissertation is an interview-based study of how information and communication technologies mediate familial arrangements in transnational eldercare. She plans to further her studies as a PhD student focusing on gender-based violence. She is also a part-time research assistant at the Gender Research Centre, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies.
Kah Hui LEE
Kah Hui Lee is a PhD (Cultural Management) student at the University of Tokyo. Her research interests include critical heritage discourse, urban landscape studies, and case studies in Asia. Her research focuses on the heritagisation of everyday visible landscapes—including both officially recognised historic areas and contested landscapes—in Tokyo and Singapore. With the support of the Sasakawa Scientific Research Grant, Kah Hui has explored the management of everyday urban heritage in Singapore, with a particular focus on Kampong Glam under the theme of “Everyday Urban Heritage Management: Urban Landscapes and Conservation Policies in Singapore”.
Lamphay INTHAKOUN
Lamphay Inthakoun is a PhD student in Southeast Asian Studies in the Graduate School of Asian and African Arca Studies (ASAFAS) at Kyoto University, Japan. Her doctoral research examines the intersections between climate change policies and swidden cultivation in the uplands of Laos. She has been working in Laos on academic research and development projects for over 15 years. Her work focuses on forestry, agriculture, rural livelihoods, climate change, and land-use change issues. Her research interests in upland livelihoods and the environment were piqued as an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Forestry, National University of Laos. She has a master's degree in development studies from the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment (IDCE), Clark University, US, where she gained exposure to critical theories of development and social change.
Md Zaidul Anwar Hj MD KASIM
Md Zaidul Anwar Hj Md Kasim is a PhD (International Programme) student at Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He worked as an associate researcher at the Thammasat Institute of Area Studies (TIARA), Thammasat University, Thailand, before pursuing his PhD. As associate researcher, he worked on research projects focusing on the halal industry in maritime Southeast Asia and contemporary issues in ASEAN. He is currently working on the issue of ethnic Chinese identity and belonging in Brunei, focusing on their experiences of structural discrimination and adaptive strategies for coping with such discrimination. His research interests include area studies, ethnic minorities' citizenship, identity and belonging in the Chinese diaspora, and discrimination against ethnic minorities.
Pranab MANDAL
Pranab Mandal is a PhD candidate in the Department of English of Jadavpur University, India and Assistant Professor of English at Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, India. His research interest lies in the intersections of ecology, spirituality, and theatre practice in South Asia and Southeast Asia. He is a member of the Asian Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research and has participated in its Colloquiums in Singapore (2016) and the Philippines (2018). He is a recipient of the John McGrath Scholarship and the Charles Wallace research grant from the Charles Wallace India Trust, British Council in 2023 for conducting research in the UK. His edited book, "Theatre Practice: Text and Performance, Interpretation and Experimentation", was published by the Jadavpur University Society for American Studies (JUSAS) in November 2018.
Rani PRIHATMANTI
Rani Prihatmanti is a PhD candidate in the Interior Design Programme, School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang. She was a USM Fellowship recipient from 2017 to 2020. She was also a graduate research assistant in USM in research projects related to cultural heritage. In early 2023, she was appointed as Director of the Centre for Creative Heritage Studies (CCHS) in Universitas Ciputra, Surabaya – Indonesia where she has been lecturing in the architecture department since 2013. Her research interests include interior design and culture, adaptive reuse, heritage building, human comfort, ethnobotany, cultural food, and traditional textiles.
Saowapark KHANMAN
Saowapark Khanman is a third-year PhD candidate in folklore studies at the Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. She is working on her doctoral project on folklore and urbanisation in contemporary Thai cinema. Her research interests include contemporary Thai urban and political issues, folklore and religious practices in urban context and the deployment of folklore in cinemas and mass media, narratives and autoethnography, and urbanisation and globalisation especially that related to Thai cultural context. She is also a teaching assistant at Chulalongkorn University.
See Huat (Kenneth) WONG
See Huat (Kenneth) Wong is a second-year PhD student in the Cultural Studies Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong. As an independent curator and member of ICOM Malaysia, his curatorial proposal was selected by Waley Art Taipei as one of the five winners out of 57 submissions in July 2020. He has also published a paper titled “Negotiating the Realization of Asian Queer Art Bienalle” in the 2020 Annual Conference and Seminar Proceedings of the Taiwan Art History Association. In December 2022, he was selected to present “A Critical Analysis of Queer Art Representation in Spectrosynthesis I and II” at the online conference Exhibitionism: Sexuality at the Museum, which was co-organised by The Research Center for the Cultural History of Sexuality (Berlin), the Kinsey Institute (Bloomington), and the Wilzig Erotic Art Museum (Miami).