Academic Profile : No longer with NTU
This experience guided me to pursue a masters degree in urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. During the years in Boston, I developed an interest in issues of immigration, particularly about the process of migrant settlement, inter-cultural interaction and social integration. In the summer of 2003, I interned with the Mayor’s Office for New Bostonians where I helped developed the city's English as a Second Language database and facilitated walk-in advocacy. These myriad of life experiences converged to inform my graduate study at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California.
My doctoral research studied how different ethnicities and nationalities co-exist in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles and the possibilities for inter-cultural learning in the public spaces of these diverse neighborhoods. In 2014, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Gӧttingen, Germany.
Between 2007 and 2017, I was a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. I am a Full member of the Singapore Institute of Planners since 2020.
I teach courses on urban planning and design, urban sociology and public policy as part of the Major in Public Policy & Global Affairs and the Minor in Geography and Urban Planning. In these courses, I emphasize making connections between theory and practice. For this purpose, I like to have students engage with the urban context of Singapore by thinking about how theories apply and translate to our locale, as well as crafting planning & design studios for students to "experience" urban planning through primary fieldwork and practice. Check out this website for the urban planning and design studios showcasing student projects: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hu2002-studio/
The courses that I teach:
HU1001: Introduction to Geography (AY2018-19)
HU1002: Introduction to Urban Planning
HU2002: Urban Life, Design and Policy
HA3032: Urban Politics and Policy-making
HA4032: What is a City?
The course descriptions can be found here: http://www.sss.ntu.edu.sg/Programmes/ppga/undergraduate/Pages/Course-Descriptions.aspx
Academic Qualifications:
2013 PhD (Policy, Planning and Development), University of Southern California
2004 MUP (Master in Urban Planning), Harvard University
2000 BA (Hons) in Geography, National University of Singapore
1999 BA in Geography and Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
My core research interest lies at the intersections of the formation of social life in cities, global immigration and the planning/design of the urban built environment. I particularly enjoy including mapping as a method of inquiry. Thus, I am intrigued by research (visual and textual) that concurrently explores the joint dimension of society and space and how they interface with urban plans, policies and institutions.
My current research:
1. HAB-itat: How does our perception of urban change shape our sense of home and belonging? How do children and youth construct home and belonging in this age of global mobility? What is the role of the urban built environment in the formation of home and belonging?
2. Urban Imprints of Immigration in Singapore:This project examines the social and spatial changes experienced in locales close to international schools, as a means to study the size and pattern of the imprints of global immigration on local neighborhoods in Singapore.
3. Inter-cultural Learning and Urban Planning in Diverse Places: How do multi-ethnic and multi-national locales function? What are the tensions in diversity? How can the urban built environments be planned and designed for inter-cultural learning in diverse locales?;
4. Valuing Vacant Sites: Working with my collaborator Nanyang Assistant Professor Dr Perrine Hamel of Asian School of the Environment, we are studying how to better assess the social and ecological values of vacant sites in land-scarce urban environments like Singapore.
- Building Socially-beneficial and Vibrant Social Enterprises in Singapore and Beyond
- Urban imprints of the network society: The development of foreign system schools and their effects on the configurations of urban space and social relations in Singapore