Let me know if you are! I will be presenting on Saturday, 14 March:

Panel 627:
Saltwater Empires: Environment,
Commodities, and Colonial Science in
Maritime Asia
VCC, Room 203 8:30AM-10:00AM

In many ways, I started this blog because I am presenting this year at the Association of Asian Studies Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Yes: I had the audacity to even make namecards!

And I thought: you know, it’d be nice to have something beyond the confines of a standardised LinkedIn profile too. Not that a website is entirely necessary, nor necessarily even more aesthetic/professional (especially since I have zero webmaster experience) ––but I figured it’d be good to create the page first la, and go from there.

My experience at AAS 2025 had been a very positive one: I was quite intoxicated by the attention I got for my presentation, at the “Rising Voices of Southeast Asian Studies” panel. It came as a great surprise to me that people were looking to just chat, and to find fellow nerds to nerd out about similar things with! “Networking” is such an awful word for the deep, meaningful conversations I had with so many new friends there, but I suppose I did make many new friends there too.

The experience also made me realise: it’d be useful to have a more put-together profile. Namecards, contact numbers. Places people could find out more about me if they were interested in the research I did…

And so this website was born. Partly out of the AAS experience, and partly out of thinking about what I wanted to put on my namecard too.

As these things go, it might be that I won’t have a chance to share my namecard, or profile myself as much. It might turn out to be a much quieter conference experience this time than I expected.

But I think it’d be good to be more prepared!

And actually, thinking back, what I enjoyed and still enjoy is meeting fellow nerds: people who get what it’s like to do deep research into archives and animals. Or the loneliness of being a Southeast Asian scholar in a sea of East Asian academics; or more so of being a Singa-Malaysian student in even the Southeast Asian crowd. It’s always a joy to meet kindred spirits – so I am looking forward to that more than any sliver of acclaim from my presentation! (More of what I will be presenting in another post, perhaps)

In any case, let me know if you will be at AAS!