TEACHING

Politics of Identity in Developing Countries

This upper-level 3-hour seminar introduces students to the study of identity and politics within political science.  Students will become familiar with the various methodological approaches to understanding the construction and mobilization of identities: ethnic, national, religious, and gender. Drawing on empirical works on South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, students will observe how institutions shape, manipulate, and mobilize identities, and how they in turn can produce pathological outcomes such as inter-group violence, political instability, underdevelopment, and the everyday marginalization of the ethnic, religious, and sexual “other”. 

Politics of Southeast Asia

This class is a survey course on comparative politics of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia offers a fascinating diversity of experiences and outcomes, both within and across countries that it provides a good opportunity for theory building and testing.  We examine questions as nation-building, economic growth, identity formation, authoritarian politics, corruption, and anti-minority violence.  Given the vastness of the region, we only cover a handful of countries: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar. This narrower focus will allow us to go into greater depth into each country.

International Development

This 3-hour seminar is a required class for Global Affairs majors and minors at Yale-NUS, and it examines the determinants and mechanisms through which poor countries develop. While this course focuses primarily on the development of political structures that enhance human development, it also gives significant attention to social and economic change associated with modernization.  Among others, the questions we explore in this class include: Why are some countries poor and repressive? Why have some developed economically, achieved stability, and protected human rights, while others stagnated and/or declined? What determines state capacity, good governance, and development?  We read classical and recent empirical works with evidence from countries in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.  

International Political Economy

In this 3-hour seminar, students will learn the principles of international political economy. Among others, we will cover key issues in international trade, financial crises, development, foreign aid, multinational corporations, inequality, globalization, and illicit trade.

Comparative Social Inquiry

This is a team-taught common curriculum class every first-year student takes at Yale-NUS. In this class, faculty from various social sciences disciplines introduce themes, questions, and approaches to understanding the "givens" of society (e.g., state, market, class, race, gender) as well as how these structures interact with each other and influence human action.  The course syllabus is designed collectively by the teaching team; I designed the module on Social Protest and Change.

My teaching statement, syllabi, and all teaching evaluations are available upon request

I'm happy to supervise senior capstones and PhD dissertations on questions related to ethnic politics, elections in new democracies, political economy, gender, and political violence.  Interested students should send me a proposal that clearly outlines the puzzle, possible answers given what we already know from the literature, and a tentative research design. I may also request a writing sample and/or a list of classes taken on research methods and political science. The final decision will depend on the quality of your proposal and my availability given the teaching/capstone supervision needs across the college. 

Here are two examples of capstones I have supervised.  Both students won prizes for outstanding capstone in their respective majors and were among the select undergraduates who delivered poster presentations at the MPSA conference in April 2018 in Chicago, IL.  

At Yale-NUS, I served on the PhD dissertation committees of Jung Hoon Park (Political Science) and Jessica Yeo (Comparative Asian Studies) at National University of Singapore. 

I will only write letters for students about whom I can be strongly and honestly supportive.    At minimum, this usually requires students taking at least one of my classes and performing well.  If you would like me to write a letter for you, please note that I need THREE WEEKS of advance notice.  Please supply your CV,  instructions on how to send each letter (i.e., where to upload the letter, mailing addresses if a hard copy letter is required), and deadlines. It would be particularly helpful if in your email you also include a list of information (i.e., what you wrote in your paper for my class/under my supervision, grades and awards earned, etc), as well as any written material you are submitting for this application. The more detail you put in your email, the more I am able to write a good letter.  

Don't hesitate to send me a reminder by email shortly before the deadline.