RESEARCH

Research Areas

Sex, Gender, the Body, Race, and Sexuality
Modern East/Southeast Asia
Asian American Studies (Queer Asian America)
Performance Studies
Ethnomusicology

My research deals primarily with sex, gender, race, and sexuality in the transpacific, with a particular focus on the queer Asian diaspora, queer nightlife, and sound studies. This work is guided by pleasurable objects of analysis (music festivals, fetish wear, sex[uality]) and their illustration of queer Asian or “Gaysian” lifeworlds/soundscapes in diaspora across the Pacific Rim.

CURRENT PROJECTS

“"You Make Me Feel Good, I Like It,": Queer Asian/American Listening, Nightlife, and Sounds That Soothe Us
- My doctoral degree is invested in thinking with and through Asian/American nightlife as a microcosm for the Asian/American condition, as well as what queer Asian/American nightlife in Southeast Asia and North America can potentially teach us about the diasporic experience.

PREVIOUS PROJECTS

An epistemology from the closet : a queer archival practice and history of gendered performance in Singapore’s Officer Cadet School
- For my Masters degree thesis, I investigated the Singaporean Officer Cadet School (OCS) singlet as a queer archival object and how queer people took something symbolic of nationalistic "straight" masculinity and turned it into an affective object of queer fetish.
Mui Tsai (妹仔) and Transpacific Child Labour Trafficking
- As part of instructional materials for transpacific Asian Studies, I researched and created a teaching module centered around mui tsai and the circulation of Chinese child labor.
From Chinese Men to Chinese “Boys” : Unearthing Masculinities and Intimate Labour in Colonial Singapore
- For my Bachelors degree thesis, I looked at histories of gay sex work in Singapore and tried to piece together how gay Asian sex work purchased by white colonial elite led to the creation of Section 377A, or the anti-gay sex law in Singapore which lasted until 2022 (a few months after the completion of my thesis).

Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Chinese Cultures
- I taught and coordinated a UBC course on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Chinese Cultures
  - Topics included polygamy and polyamory, feminist literature, Queer cinema, and BL literature