Research Grant Projects

Project Title:

Natural Infrastructure, Interspecies Entanglements, and Spatial Relations in Singapore and Houston

Principal Investigator:

Sayd RANDLE, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1

Project Synopsis:

Cities globally are increasingly adopting nature-based infrastructure to address urban environmental challenges. These green spaces, a central aspect of Singapore's Green Plan 2030, serve ecological functions like managing stormwater, improving air quality, and storing carbon. However, the proposed research delves into the overlooked impact of these natural infrastructures on non-domesticated animals, exploring their role in shaping urban environments and socio-ecological relations. By centering on these creatures, the study aims to provide insights into how green infrastructure projects impact city life, aiding planners in fostering public support and engagement for sustainable urban development and climate change mitigation.

Project Title:

Practical Challenges to Interdisciplinary Research in Energy Studies

Principal Investigator:

Terry VAN GEVELT, Associate Professor of Urban Sustainability

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1

Project Synopsis:

The need for interdisciplinary research in energy studies is widely acknowledged, but practical challenges hinder collaboration. Issues include varying publication norms, academic promotion favoring single-discipline work, and perceptions of lower rigor in interdisciplinary research. This project aims to systematically understand these challenges using advanced statistical techniques. Three key questions will be explored: (1) How do collaborators from different disciplines reconcile differences in authorship conventions when publishing interdisciplinary work in energy studies?; (2) Does interdisciplinary collaboration negatively impact a scholar's standing in their home discipline?; (3) Are research articles published in interdisciplinary energy studies journals perceived to be less rigorous than articles published in single-discipline journals? The study seeks to provide evidence-based insights and contribute to facilitating interdisciplinary research in energy studies and beyond.

Project Title:

Education Infrastructures and Migrant Un/Belonging: Indian Students in Singapore

Principal Investigator:

Orlando WOODS, Associate Professor of Geography

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (Partnership with University of Toronto)

Project Synopsis:

This project seeks to understand the role of “education infrastructures” in shaping the terms and extent of belonging amongst Indian migrants in Singapore and explores the development and potential fracturing of an idea of “global Indianness” as it is taught, experienced, and lived in Singapore and Toronto.

Project Title:

Technocratic Regionalism in Southeast Asia: The Translational Politics of Smart City Knowledge Transfer

Principal Investigator:

Orlando WOODS, Associate Professor of Geography

Funding Source:

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 2

Project Synopsis:

This project will explore the translational politics of smart city knowledge transfer, and how these politics manifest in urban environments throughout Southeast Asia. We define “translational politics” as the (mis)alignments, tensions and opportunities for exploitation that emerge when different scales of influence converge and materialise within a given urban context. We will explore the emergence of “technocratic regionalism” as a strategy through which power and inequality are (re)produced at both the macro (or global, regional and national) and micro (or local) scales.

Project Title:

Cooling Singapore 2.0: Urban Climate Risks and Benefits

Principal Investigator:

Winston CHOW, Professor of Urban Climate

Funding Source: 

National Research Foundation

Project Synopsis:

This project is an interdisciplinary and multi-institute work package, led by SMU, making use of the Digital Urban Climate Twin (DUCT) results from the first Cooling Singapore 2.0 work package to examine the urban climate risks and impacts from environmental and physiological perspectives. The objectives include (a.) investigating where and who in Singapore will be affected by excessive heat from urbanisation and climate change, and (b.) examining if existing measures, such as vegetation cover, will have reduced effectiveness in minimising heat exposure under a warming climate. Results from this project will aid in assessment and future policy development towards urban warmth solutions in Singapore.

Project Title:

The ‘Other’ Garden City: Documenting Singapore’s Edible Gardening Heritage

Principal Investigator:

Fiona Clare WILLIAMSON, Associate Professor of Environmental History

Funding Source: 

National Heritage Board's Heritage Research Grant

Project Synopsis:

Spanning approximately two hundred years of Singapore’s modern history, this study will draw upon a wide array of textual and non-textual historical and contemporary sources to document gardening in Singapore from the 19th century to the present day. It will identify the ways in which historical gardening practices in Singapore have been continued, reinforced, and transformed into the contemporary period through building a body of new research and knowledge. In doing so, our proposed study will reflect an increased focus on ICH as part of the Our SG Heritage Plan and catalyze the writing of a new environmental history of Singapore, one which places ordinary people and practices in the foreground.

Project Title:

ASEAN and the Cultural Production of Southeast Asian Identities in the late Cold War

Principal Investigator:

NGOEI Wen-Qing, Associate Professor of History

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1

Project Synopsis:

This research project examines how the policies of ASEAN’s Committee on Culture and Information (COCI) shaped its member states’ national identity-building cultural policies in the late Cold War period (1980s-early 1990s) and the ways that non-state culture-makers produced their own visions of national or transnational affiliations that may have complemented, diverged from, or interrogated those of their political elites, including those who served in ASEAN COCI. 

Project Title:

Cooling Singapore 2.0: Digital Urban Climate Twin

Co-Principal Investigator: 
(Lead SMU Investigator)

Winston CHOW, Professor of Urban Climate

Funding Source: 

National Research Foundation

Project Synopsis:

Cooling Singapore 2.0 is a multi-disciplinary research project that aims to build a Digital Urban Climate Twin (DUCT) in Singapore through the integration of relevant computational models (environmental, land surface, industrial, traffic, building energy), as well as regional- and micro-scale climate models to explore the heat effects of buildings, transport, and industry. DUCT users are exposed to a sophisticated graphical user interface designed to conduct simulation experiments and explore hypothetical scenarios. In turn, the insights gained will facilitate urban planners and policymakers in developing solutions to address the urban heat challenge in Singapore.

Project Title:

Catholic Talk, Social Dreaming: Civil Society Discourse in Ukraine and Hong Kong

Principal Investigator:

Justin K TSE, Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture (Education)

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1

Project Synopsis:

This project focuses on how secular civil society activists in post-Maidan Ukraine and post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong appropriate ‘Catholic talk’ for what we call their ‘social dreaming,’ their aspirations for a democratic civil society marked by rule of law and respect for human rights. 

Project Title:

ASEAN Writers and Artists and the Post-Vietnam War World

Principal Investigator:

NGOEI Wen-Qing, Associate Professor of History

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1

Project Synopsis:

This project explores how ASEAN culture-makers—specifically artists and writers—from the 1970s to the early 1990s produced works that imagined, portrayed and shaped the post-Vietnam War era in their own country’s and the region’s foreign relations with the wider world. 

Project Title:

Environmental Perception in Mandai Parks

Principal Investigator:

Winston CHOW, Professor of Urban Climate

Funding Source: 

Mandai Park Development Pte Ltd

Project Synopsis:

This research project aims to find out how thermal environment impacts the effectiveness of environmental/educational message retention by guests visiting current parks in the Mandai district – Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, River Safari, and will allow the research team to formulate suggestions that will help inform how and where educational messages can be deployed for maximum effectiveness within the new features of the Mandai project.

Project Title:

New Religious Pluralisms in Singapore: Migration, Integration and Difference

Principal Investigator:

Orlando WOODS, Associate Professor of Geography

Funding Source: 

Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 2

Project Synopsis:

The project seeks to understand the extent to which religion can enable or disenable the integration of migrant and nonmigrant communities from different religious traditions. Through such an understanding, the project hopes to identify the extent to which new religious pluralisms exist in Singapore, how they manifest across different religious groups, and the strategies deployed by different religious groups to manage them.

Project Title:

Cooling Singapore 1.5: Virtual Singapore Urban Climate Design

Co-Principal Investigator:
(Lead SMU Investigator)

Winston CHOW, Professor of Urban Climate

Funding Source: 

National Research Foundation

Project Synopsis:

Singapore has become warmer in recent years as a result of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Reducing this effect, and so improving the thermal comfort for the city’s residents, will require the combined effort from many stakeholders from government, academia, and private sector. The UHI has become a matter of increasing concern because of its many, mainly negative, effects upon the quality of urban life. In tropical Singapore, increased temperatures due to UHI negatively affect people’s liveability and outdoor thermal comfort (OTC). Many of these problems are likely to become more severe in the future, partly because of urban growth but also exacerbated by the impacts of climate change upon cities. Tackling such a complex undertaking necessitates a multidisciplinary and all-of-government approach.