Chinese temple networks in Southeast Asia: A WebGIS Digital Humanities Platform for the collaborative study of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia

Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier

The work of the audience: visual matrix methodology in museums

Visual matrix methodology has been designed for researching cultural imaginaries. It is an image-led, group-based method that creates a “third space” research setting to observe audience groups re-enacting lived experience of an event or process that takes place in the third space of a cultural setting. In this article the method is described through its use in relation to an art-science exhibition, Human + Future of the species, where three audience groups with investments in technology worked with exhibition material to achieve a complex, ambivalent state of mind regarding technological futures. The visual matrix has been designed to capture the affective and aesthetic quality of audience engagement in third space by showing what audiences do with what is presented to them. We argue that such methodologies are useful for museums as they grapple with their role as sites where citizens not only engage in dialogue with one another but actively re-work their imaginaries of the future

“When I’m Dead, Demolish It”: Contradictions and Compromises in Preserving Values at Lee Kuan Yew’s Oxley Road Home, Singapore

Since the death of Singapore’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, on March 23, 2015, the fate of his house at 38 Oxley Road remains in question. In spite of its association to this seminal political leader and the fact that historic meetings that led to Singapore’s independence from British rule in 1959 were held in its basement dining room, heritage authorities and the Singaporean public are faced with a dilemma because Lee Kuan Yew had, on multiple occasions, expressed his wish to have the more-than-a-century-old colonial bungalow demolished after his passing and he had included this wish in his last will and testament. This thesis uses the ongoing debate surrounding 38 Oxley Road as a case study. It aims to address how decision-makers in the heritage conservation field might more effectively negotiate the multiplicity of competing values ascribed to heritage sites in working toward a future common good. Through a discourse analysis, the thesis examines how a values-based approach to heritage conservation can serve as a basis for exploring more robust tools for decision-making through the adoption of a more future-looking, scenario-focused framework. In this way, heritage decision-makers are challenged to look beyond some of the field’s traditional paradigms, as reflective of the broad shift from more expert-driven materials-based approaches to more participatory and contextually aware values-based approaches. In line with a values-based approach that posits that the goal of heritage conservation is to preserve significance and not material for its own sake, this thesis shows how an assessment and prioritization of the broad range of values ascribed to a heritage site can expand the range of potential outcomes that may effectively transfer those values to future generations. Acknowledging and understanding this spectrum of possible outcomes and evaluating their trade-offs can help to enhance the field’s capacity to creatively work out contradictions and reach compromises in its decisions. In doing so, heritage decision-makers can more effectively engage in dialogue with related planning and policy fields as they work toward shaping the collective future

Unpicking the semes: Power, resistance, and the Internet

The Internet was a catalyst for refiguring the previous models of media relationships. For many, the Internet is a medium that liberates individuals from the centralised and asymmetrical power structures of traditional mass media and other social institutions in particular, the boundaries set by the nation and the state. For other people, the Internet increases the capacity for surveillance and control. This dissertation argues for a fluid conception of the operations of power and resistance on the Internet that takes into account the various discourses which play a part in determining agency and subjectivity. It examines and balances the narratives of liberation and oppression against each other: for, just as the developments in Internet technology contribute to changes in discourse, so too existing or prior discursive limits and relations of power affect Internet culture and technology. In the process of analysing the interplay of different discourses on the Internet, this dissertation takes into account transnational and national cultural flows and the insights that conceptual work on globalisation, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism can provide. The case studies are concerned with change and centre on the use of the Internet to effect this change; they include: the Singaporean Internet, a 'thread' about Asian culture and Australia, the representation of oppression and the formation of Chinese diasporic collectivities, and anti capitalist networks. Through these case studies, the dissertation examines the degree to which the nation-state can regulate and affect the discourses at play on the Internet as well as the agency of participants in countering and maintaining these discourses. This dissertation also analyses activists' use of the Internet to form transnational networks. It discusses the limitations of their work including problems with representation

Presence and agency in real and virtual spaces: The promise of extended reality for language learning

Augmented and virtual realities (together “extended reality”) offer language learners the opportunity to communicate and interact in real and virtual spaces. In augmented reality (AR), users view computer-generated layers added to a phone camera’s view of the world. Virtual reality (VR) immerses users in a 3D environment that might simulate aspects of the outside world or project an entirely imagined reality. This column looks at opportunities and challenges in the use of extended reality (XR) for second language learning. Opportunities include higher learner motivation and personal agency through XR uses that feature collaboration and open-ended interactions, particularly in simulations, games, and learner co-design. That direction offers more alignment with current theories of second language acquisition (SLA)–emphasizing holistic language development and ecological frameworks–than most commercial VR apps currently available. Those posit a linear language development and focus largely on vocabulary learning and language practice within closed role-play scenarios. Offering both AR and VR access, mixed reality may present opportunities to combine the best features of each medium. Advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) provide additional possibilities for personalized language learning in a flexible and dynamic VR environment

Perspectives on the 21st Century Urban University from Singapore – A viewpoint forum

In this Cities viewpoint forum, we argue that there is a need to rethink U.S./U.K.-centric approaches to the urban university in policy and practice. Gathering three critical commentaries by practitioners from within the Singaporean higher education system, the forum responds to the challenges of: (1) broadened expectation placed on higher education institutions; (2) the pressures and possibilities of global urbanization; and (3) the provocation to theorize the urban, and thus the urban university, from beyond the ‘Global North’. Following an introduction detailing the history and relevance of the Singaporean case, the three viewpoints seek to illustrate the various dimensions of university urbanism in the ‘Lion City’. Each address what the idea of being an urban university means, and how it is operationalized in Singapore. Key policy and conceptual insights illuminate a higher education regime negotiating the tensions between national developmentalist agendas and the opportunities opened by global urban connectivity. Significantly, and in contrast to current urban university paradigms, we find Singapore\u27s university sector internalizing and operating with a particular technocratic urban ontology that, while partial, helps collapses the distinction between universities being ‘in’, ‘of’, or ‘for’ the city and opens new avenues to analyze and mobilize universities in urban(izing) society

Staycation: A domestic wellness tourism among Malaysian and Singaporean

One phenomenon observed during the pandemic was the increase in a staycation in most countries. This study focuses on wellness tourism through staycation in Malaysia and Singapore. A self-administered online questionnaire was completed by 109 Malaysians and 60 Singaporeans. Using IBM SPSS and SmartPLS, the determinants examined were the sense of presence, experience quality, hedonic motivation, and psychological detachment and mediated by family involvement towards the gratification of wellness tourism. This study contributes to theory and practices for Malaysia and Singapore's domestic tourism and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 12 for mental well-being and responsible consumption. Keywords: staycation, wellness tourism, use and gratification, domestic tourism eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI