Research
Research
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I am the co-author of a peer-reviewed research article, titled "Nature, Disappeared: Anti-environmental Values in Singapore’s History Textbooks, 1984–2015"(2021).
The paper examined the environmental narratives taught in Singapore history textbooks. Since Singapore does not currently have an environmental education curriculum, the mandatory history curriculum taught in all government schools is a rich site of inquiry for studying the environmental education that schoolchildren gain from history textbooks.
Our results show that Singapore's history textbook narratives mostly portray people as independent from the environment. Students also learn that the environment matters less today than in the past, as narratives of the environment are largely found in textbook pages portraying Singapore’s past (the years before independence).
These findings are significant as they exacerbate the modern Singaporean’s inability to recognize their embeddedness within and influence on the nonhuman environment in this moment of climate crisis.
Summer Field School Research (South Sulawesi, Indonesia)
Summer Field School Research (South Sulawesi, Indonesia)
In the hills of South Sulawesi, a village called Limapocoe had become a site of complex land conflicts.
We ventured out to Jambua, a hamlet in Limapocce, to explore how land conflicts and migration have shaped the livelihoods of locals. Upon our arrival, there were a few things in the village that caught our attention: there were few young people in Jambua and there were several abandoned houses throughout the village. We found that many individuals resorted to migration as a strategy for livelihood. They had to, because State forest boundaries have put restrictions on many of the villagers' lands, claiming that all the trees—planted by the villagers—were a part of the protected forest. Many villagers migrated far. For some, it has been over 40 years since they left home.
We used participant observation, walking ethnographies and semi-structured interviews to engage with villagers.
Joyful moment captured
Preparing sugarcane, a delicious and sugar snack for the elephants
Typical elephant care program at elephant sanctuaries
MA Thesis (in progress):
Selling Elephants to Save Them: Re-valuing Elephant Labor in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Selling Elephants to Save Them: Re-valuing Elephant Labor in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Abstract:
Political ecologists have demonstrated how tourism benefited from neoliberalism’s renewed faith in market forces, decentralization, economic diversification, commitment to non-traditional exports including tourism, and the roll-back of state control. Tourism geographers have demonstrated that international ecotourism development seeks a spatial fix for capitalism in novel, relatively undeveloped areas of the world, contributing to the commoditization of nonhuman nature. Yet, we know much less about the critical role of tourists and tourism operators (including elephant camp owners, tour guides and tour agents) in perpetuating neoliberal solutions in biodiversity conservation and ecotourism. This is because tourism discourse and literature, tainted by colonial and patriarchal perspectives, portray hierarchical binaries between the tourists and the ‘toured’, identities that coincide with ‘helpers’ and those ‘in need of help’ (Sin and Minca, 2014). It is imperative to understand the co-construction of the elephant camp experience by numerous tourism actors in producing, representing and selling neoliberal nature in ecotourism “for” environmental conservation.
This thesis investigates how captive Asian elephants are re-valued in neoliberal nature, based on the empirical case of Chiang Mai, Thailand. It will examine how local hosts construct elephant camp experiences that reflect the logics of commoditization and neoliberal natures, and how these spatial and social constructions of elephant tourism shape tourists’ experiences and representations of elephant camps. The study focuses on the newer tourist group of Mainland Chinese tourists who are increasingly shaping global ecotourism trends as the world’s largest source of international arrivals and spenders. Participant observation, ethnography and 33 semi-structured interviews with elephant camp owners, tour guides, tour agents and tourists were conducted in May to August 2025 when I participated in 20 elephant tourism experiences.
This project considers how privatizing and commodifying nature for ecotourism reproduces harm even when driven by good intentions. Yet I found elephant tourism sites to be layered, politically charged and often contested geographic spaces that are far from ‘fixed’. Therefore, I posit that equity and conservation outcomes can be improved for both the communities who live and work alongside elephants and for the elephants themselves.
Collaborative Paper (submitted for review!):
Elephant Economics: Conditions for benefitting from Elephant Tourism Market in an upland Karen village
Elephant Economics: Conditions for benefitting from Elephant Tourism Market in an upland Karen village
Abstract:
In 1989, Thailand’s national logging ban left captive elephants and their mahouts unemployed, catalyzing the transformation of elephants from being primarily used in logging to tourism. Elephant tourism continues to shape livelihoods and landscapes today. Pre-pandemic, elephant tourism generated over US$770 million annually. In 2025, an estimated 90 elephant camps are housing more than 870 elephants in Chiang Mai province alone. Elephant camps are institutions that provide tourists close encounters with elephants, such as observation, feeding, bathing, walking and riding. Some of these elephant camps are located in rural upland areas inhabited by indigenous Karen (Pgakyaw) communities, where agrarian subsistence intersects with new economic opportunities. Beyond subsistence cultivation, Pgakyaw villagers are seeking to diversify their households and personal income by participating in this sector.
This ethnographic study examines how the elephant tourism economy reshapes indigenous livelihood strategies, including crop choice and employment choice, in one Pgakyaw community. Drawing on 32 qualitative interviews, the research maps diverse forms of indigenous involvement in the elephant tourism supply chain, including camp ownership, land leasing, farming, and wage work as mahouts, guides, and housekeepers. It identifies the socio-economic conditions—land and capital ownership, market access, and familial and social networks—that mediate who benefits from elephant tourism.
This study highlights how elephant tourism influences agrarian change, creating new forms of labor, land use, and value, and reveals one empirical case of how Indigenous peoples navigate shifting economies while sustaining cultural meaning in their livelihood.
A Research Subquestion of my current MA Project
A Research Subquestion of my current MA Project
One of the research sub-questions of my Master Thesis project asks: How do tourism operators represent an authentic elephant camp experience?
This can be operationalized as: How do postcard representations of elephants and their mahouts in Thailand reflect and reshape human-elephant relationships in the context of ecotourism? What do these portrayals reveal about the intersections of wildlife tourism, commoditized nature, and neoliberal conservation practices?
Check out this StoryMap to learn about my findings!
Research Paper (submitted for review!):
Selling Elephant Postcards: Representations of Tourism in Thailand
Selling Elephant Postcards: Representations of Tourism in Thailand
Abstract:
This paper aims to understand the practice of nature-based ecotourism in Thailand involving elephants, and how the neoliberalization and commoditization of nature, or the phenomena of selling access to nature to ‘save’ it, is reshaping and changing Indigenous and local relationships with elephants. To do so, I critically engage with postcards to examine their representations of elephants in Thailand, as well as how elephant keepers interact with, relate to and are entangled with elephants and the local environment.
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