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 PhD supervisions. 

Suzaini M. Zaid is currently teaching at the Department of Building Surveying in the Faculty of Built Environment and was the first EcoCampus Coordinator in Universiti Malaya. Suzaini holds a PhD in Planning and Urban Development from the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales. Suzaini was part of the testing of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Sustainable Building and Climate Initiative (UNEP-SBCI)’s Common Carbon Metric and Protocol in the Malaysian context through her PhD research.    Her current research interest focuses on green intervention strategies through vertical greenery systems, operational energy, and user behaviour, which accumulated in multiple journal publications and her first book titled “Human Impact on Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation in the Built Environment”. She has teaching experience in the fields of building surveying, urban planning, and sustainable development.    Suzaini is also a professionally certified Green Building Index (GBI) Facilitator and a Malaysian Carbon Reduction and Environmental Sustainability Tool (MyCREST) Qualified Professional. She is determined to positively impact the built environment through green interventions to address the existential crisis of climate change.

Khong obtained his Bachelor’s Degree and PhD in Sports Sciences from the University of Malaya. He has been working in exercise physiology labs since 2013,and from 2018 - 2019 he was a senior lecturer in the Department of Sports Sciences, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) University College, mainly lecturing on exercise physiology subjects as well as some sports psychology and motor control and learning courses. He began his new career, also as a senior lecturer, at his alma mater, University of Malaya, since 2020. He specialises in exercise physiology and exercise testing, particularly laboratory-based cardiovascular fitness (VO2max) test and isokinetic & isometric strength tests. His research field mainly involves usage of nutrition intervention to prevent exercise fatigue in both endurance exercise and muscular force demanding situations. He has also started to delve into works investigating effects of exercise on health conditions such as diabetes and sarcopenia. On the administration end, he is currently the program coordinator for the Master's Degree in Strength and Conditioning.