”Detrans Singapore: An Archaeology of Pleasure”
Thesis Research (in progress)
Against a state narrative that has conveniently dismissed transness as a recent Western import—and against the failure of queer and trans studies to move beyond the confines of Euro-America—this thesis emerges, first and foremost, from a personal desire to record the stories of my transgender ancestors whose support and kinship made my own survival possible. It represents a nascent attempt at writing, for lack of a more legible way of putting it, a trans history in Singapore.
Department of History and Department of Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.
Expected completion in April 2026.
Past Research projects
- “Stirring Under Our Feet”: Foucault’s Unsettling of Intellectual History (2025)
- Adapting Gender: The Butterfly Lovers on the Silver Screen (2025)
- Revolutionizing the Stage: Revisiting Yangbanxi in Cultural Revolution China (2025)
- Notes on Conceptualizing Gender Crossings in Late Imperial China (2024)
- Last Mile: Wrinkles of Capitalism (2024)
- Charging a New World: How Colt’s Factory Marketed Its Weaponry (GIS Project, 2024)
- Staging the Untamed: Nature and Social Power in Chinese Tiger-Fighting Narratives (2024)
- A Voice of One’s Own: Audio Porn, Gone Wild (2024)
- DIY Homemaking: Alternative Medicines, Trans(national) Magics (2023)
- Constructing “Unity in Diversity”: Imagining Nationhood and Modernity in Indonesian Performing Arts (2023)
- “Nowhere to Lay [My] Head”: Aliens of Queer Theology (2023)
- Gender and the Chinese Nationhood: Mulan Across the Ages (2022)
Manuscripts available upon request.
For research conducted in collaboration with faculty, please refer to my CV.
For curatorial research, see the Curation page.
”No Longer Daughters: Child Marriage in Indonesia”
Winner of the ”Map the System” Global Challenge, Saïd Business School, the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
With Sun Podchara and Valensia Tandeas
First place among more than 900 teams worldwide for a multidisciplinary research project on the systemic causes of child marriage in Indonesia.
Watch our presentation here. Full research report available upon request.
