A Nation’s Beauty on Display
The national costume segment of the Miss Universe beauty pageant sees women parading outfits ranging from the sublime to the surreal. Designing these …
Tag: Colonialism
The Elephant in the Newsroom
Human rights groups and foreign journalists are often barred from entering West Papua, allowing the Indonesian authorities to control the narrative. L…
The Highest Stage of Colonialism?
A lecture that our Managing Director PJ Thum delivered at Stanford University in October. He discusses Singapore's political development and evolution…
Almost Forgotten: Cambodia’s Anti-Colonial Nationalists
Today, Con Dao prison in southern Vietnam is a museum dedicated to the Vietnamese who fought for independence from the French. But Cambodian nationali…
Kristang: Anatomy of a Unique Malaysian Language
A historical, cultural, and linguistic analysis of Kristang, a Portuguese-Malay creole that stems from Malacca’s globalised past but is struggling t…
Writing Their Own Stories
While a lot English-language literature and writing tends to hark back to the country's tragic history of violence and genocide, young Cambodian autho…
Grappling with Indonesia’s Colonial Past
The opening of Indonesia’s first anti-colonial museum highlights the importance of critical and holistic engagement with one’s history.
Justifying Colonial Rule in Post-Colonial Singapore
Both the British colonial government and the post-independence People's Action Party government have used the same three myths to justify their polici…
Rethinking Race: Beyond the CMIO Categorisations
In emphasising racial differences, we are also denying our commonality as members of the same nation. Being Chinese, Malay or Indian, means that we c…
