Trained in Cultural Studies, I am a researcher engaging in interdisciplinary research on culture. My research is primarily concerned with the cultural history of modern and contemporary China through the lens of ‘folk’ or minjian. In particular, I am interested in how ‘folk’ has been discursively constructed by the state and intellectuals throughout the 20th century, and how it continues to be represented at heritage sites, folk art museums, folk art fairs, as well as contemporary art exhibitions in the 21st century. My interdisciplinary PhD training in Cultural Studies in Asia at the National University of Singapore has taught me to be a questioner, committed to promoting critical and creative thinking as a mode of living beyond academia. Being a practitioner of critical pedagogy, I always problematize preconceived ideas that have shaped our understandings of the world. As a lecturer, I believe that classroom is where knowledge is produced and challenged through productive dialogues between teachers and students. Besides teaching in the classroom, I am also an active listener keen on translating students’ personal experience and knowledge into discussion materials. Critical discussion could help students reflect upon how our perception of the world is sociologically constructed. Students are not passive learners but knowledge producers. My role as a teacher is to acknowledge students’ opinions as knowledge and situate their knowledge within a larger socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts so as to allow them to scrutinize their common sense. I am currently not available for Master's and PhD supervisions. 

Kiran Kaur (Ph.D., University of Malaya), is a Professor at the Department of Library & Information Science, Faculty of Arts & Social Science, Universiti Malaya. Prof. Kiran was previously the Director of the Quality Management & Enhancement Center (QMEC) responsible for accreditation and quality assurance of all levels of academic programmes in Universiti Malaya. She has had 20 years of experience in quality management systems and academic quality assurance. Prof. Kiran obtained both her Masters in Library and Information Science (1998) and PhD (2011) degree from the University of Malaya. Her research interests include information services, service quality, quality management, academic librarianship, social networking, community information services, social capital and scientometrics. Prof. Kiran's research publications appear in Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, Library & Information Science Research, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Scientometrics, Information Development, The Electronic Library, Libri, JoLIS, Library Review, Library Management and others. Prof. Kiran is the Co-Editor of the Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, which is indexed in both Social Science Citation Index and Scopus.  She has served as the President of the Malaysian Chapter for International Library and Information Science Society (ILISS) and an active member of the Consortium of iSchools in Asia-Pacific (CiSAP). Prof. Kiran is currently serving on the Technical Committee of various conferences and is a reviewer/member of the Editorial board of several reputable  journals. 

  Dr. Shani Ann Mani graduated in 1995 from The Tamil Nadu Dr.M.G.R Medical University, Chennai, India with a Bachelor in Dental Surgery and in 1998 from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (Panjab University), Chandigarh, India with a Master of Dental Surgery (Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry). She is also a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians of Glasgow. She enjoys teaching having been in academia for more than 22 years, teaching Paediatric Dentistry to undergraduate and postgraduate students. She was appointed the post-graduate coordinator in Paediatric Dentistry at the Faculty of Dentistry, University Malaya since 2014. She has been an external and internal examiner for both undergraduate and postgraduate students during her career. She is also keen in research and has authored about 30 articles published in international and national peer-reviewed journals, majority being indexed in the ISI Web of Science database, and also contributed to chapters in books. She routinely reviews manuscripts for international journals in her field of specialisation and is on the editorial board of the European Archives of Paediatric Dentistry,  Malaysian Journal of Paediatric Dentistry and BMC Oral Health.  She has also obtained research grants pertaining to her research in Paediatric Dentistry over the course of her career. She is a member of the Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry and Malaysian Association of Paediatric Dentistry besides other academic associations.