A new book, Building Urban Resilience: Singapore's Policy Response to Covid-19 is one of the first few books to discuss the Covid-19 crisis as an urban phenomenon. Written by our guests—J.J. Woo who is a Senior Lecturer at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Debbie R. Loo, who is an architect by training with a background in professional practice, urban studies research, and teaching—the book takes a look at how pandemics have shaped urban planning for centuries, and how we can learn from the experience to improve our population centres in many different ways.

Indonesian voters in Southeast Asia’s largest democracy elected the ticket of former military general Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka in February 2024, but not without controversy. Gibran is the son of outgoing President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, who is accused of manipulating the courts to allow Gibran to run despite being below the constitutional minimum age.   There are even charges of vote rigging that are being handled by Indonesia’s Election Supervisory Agency or Bawaslu and The General Elections Commission known as KPU.   Associate Professor Suzaina Kadir is Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and an expert on politics in Southeast Asia.   As an avid Indonesia watcher, we wanted to get her take on what the upcoming administration means for Indonesia domestically, regionally and globally.  

From booming GDP growth and low interest rates to raging inflation and a shrinking economy, most of us have a sense of how the macroeconomic ups and downs can affect our lives. But have you ever considered what it takes to keep an economy healthy?  Our guest certainly has. Ramkishen S. Rajan is Yong Pung How Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He has been a Visiting Fellow at various regional research institutes, including the Asia Competitiveness Institute, the Institute of Policy Studies as well as the Asian Development Bank Institute.   

The last time we spoke to Leong Ching, Vice Provost for Student Life, NUS, and Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, we discussed the "yuck factor" which describes people's visceral aversion to drinking recycled water. Today, we'll be expanding on that topic to look at the rationale behind irrational environmental behaviour in general. As an institutional economist, Professor Leong uses narratives, perceptions and stories to understand collective public behaviour as well as environmental identities. 

Urban environments, from infrastructure to green spaces, play a crucial role in shaping lifestyle choices, social dynamics, and overall quality of health.  Tan Shin Bin is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP). She previously worked as an urban planner at Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, the government body tasked with guiding the physical development of Singapore in a sustainable manner. She joins us to discuss how urban environments impact health, as well as the opportunities and challenges faced when developing policies to promote healthier lifestyles within urban spaces.

Dr Marina Kaneti is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Her area of research centres on global governance and questions of migration, climate and geopolitical developments. She has explored the influence of China around the world, including the Belt and Road initiative. Recently, she produced a two-part documentary series titled“The Seas That Bind Us and Define Us”, exploring maritime heritage and its significance in Asia. She joins us to talk about maritime heritage, exploring the shaping and impact of narratives, and implications for the present and beyond. Get our monthly updates to stay ahead on Asian policy issues here.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the advent of mobile banking has ushered in a transformative era. Access to mobile banking can have a profound impact on people in developing economies. The impact of mobile banking extends beyond individual lives – it ripples through entire communities, affecting aspects such as migration and inequality. Dr Saravana Ravindran, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, studies challenges and potential policy solutions relating to migration, including mobile banking and digital financial services. He has conducted research into whether mobile technology can reduce inequality by modernising traditional ways to transfer money. He joins us to explore the socio-economic impact of mobile banking on communities. 

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) aims to create a highly integrated regional economy by 2025. Known as the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the initiative faces many obstacles that may hinder the achieving of its goal. To understand the obstacles and opportunities, we speak to Dr Denis Hew. Currently Senior Research Fellow at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Dr Hew has served as Director of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Policy Support Unit. He also spent time managing technical assistance programmes on regional cooperation and integration at the Asian Development Bank. Dr Hew has published extensively on policy issues related to economic integration in ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific region.

Singapore is world-renowned for its urban planning. While it is enjoying the success of the good planning of the past, it finds itself in the middle of an important shift to be prepared for the environment of the future. To understand the challenges and opportunities, we speak withDr Woo Jun Jie. Dr Woo is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, where he heads the Governance and Economy department. His work focuses on urban policy, economic development, and crisis management in Asia. 

Visiting Professor Emmanuel Skoufias served as a Lead Economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank Group, from 2004 until his retirement in 2022. His area of expertise includes the use of microdata to analyse the determinants of poverty and household welfare, the impacts of risk and risk management strategies, and the targeting of social protection programs. He joined us for a deep dive into how microdata informs policy planning and decisions. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

What are the most effective methods of protecting, and hopefully restoring, the planet's biodiversity? This is a key question underlying the work of Tanya O'Garra, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Tanya is an environmental economist with over 15 years’ experience conducting research on the valuation of ecosystem services and the collective management of shared natural resources. She has recently published a study on the effectiveness of community-based approaches to conservation and natural resource management. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

Benjamin Cashore is Li Ka Shing Professor in Public Management and Director of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He specialises in global and multi-level environmental governance, comparative public policy and administration, and transnational business regulation and corporate social responsibility. In his role as the Director of IES, he focuses on helping governments and private sectors close the gap between policy commitments and actual outcomes through "fit-for-purpose" policy analysis. He joins us to help explain just how that works in the real world. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

Dr Ng Kok Hoe is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Social Inclusion Project and Case Study Unit at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS). His research interests are public housing policy, homelessness, income security and minimum income standards. In August this year, Dr Ng Kok Hoe from the Social Inclusion Project at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy published findings from a nationwide count of the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets and in temporary homeless shelters during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the second nationwide street count of homelessness in Singapore. The first, conducted by the same researcher, was in 2019. Before this research, homelessness was generally a hidden issue. Most people were not familiar with the issue. Since 2019, public concern, media interest and policy attention have all grown. In this podcast, we will discuss with Dr Ng on how the research came about, what we have learnt and what we need to do next.

Selina Ho is Assistant Professor in International Affairs and Co-Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. She is an expert on Chinese politics and foreign policy. She is especially interested in how China wields power and influence via infrastructure and water disputes in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She is co-author of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia. She joins us to discuss China's domestic politics and foreign policy, as China approaches key meetings, the 20th Party Congress, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

Terrence Ho is an Associate Professor in Practice at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Over the past decade, Professor Ho has held various policy research and leadership positions in the Singapore public service, including as an economist in the Ministry of Trade and Industry and Divisional Director of Manpower Planning and Policy at the Ministry of Manpower. A frequent commentator for publications such as the Straits Times and Channel News Asia, Professor Ho specialises in economic and manpower policy, fiscal policy, public sector management, and organisation, social security, inequality, and social mobility. He joins us to discuss Singapore's economy in this time of volatility and uncertainty. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

Vinod Thomas is Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Previously he served as Director General of Independent Evaluation at Asian Development Bank, where he worked to institute change. In his role, he assessed ADB’s development effectiveness while providing lessons to help inform ADB’s actions. This was instrumental in making green growth and action on climate change more integral to ADB’s strategy. This is just one example of Professor Thomas' deep understanding of issues affecting climate change and the environment. So he's in a perfect position to help us answer this question “Renewable Energy – how real is this for Asia?”  Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

Francesco Mancini, Vice Dean (Executive Education) and Associate Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has an extensive background in the prevention and settlement of armed conflict. He was a senior director at the International Peace Institute in New York, a think tank that works very closely with the United Nations and its member states. He has been working in and around conflict, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and negotiation for close to 20 years. In that light, we've asked him to share his views on the current military conflict in Ukraine. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.

“What is public policy?” It has often been broadly defined as a set of actions the government decides to take when approaching a problem that affects society as a group. When Global-is-Asian decided to explore the question of public policy and its impact on Singapore, one faculty member stood out as the perfect person to speak with to get their input: Lim Siong Guan is Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, instructing on leadership and change management, and his depth of experience is impressive He was the Head of the Singapore Civil Service from 1999 to 2005. He has been the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance. He has also served as Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority and the Central Provident Fund Board. And these are just a few of his accomplishments. We were very lucky to have a few minutes to discuss, “What is Public Policy?”

Dr. Marina Kaneti specialises in questions of global development, including the Chinese Belt and Road initiative, environmental governance, human rights, the sustainable development goals and for the purpose of this discussion – migration. I started by asking her what made her interested in migration in the first place.

We have Dr. Mathew Mathews, Principal Research Fellow and Head of the Social Lab at the Institute of Policy Studies at NUS and Shamil Zainuddin, Research Associate at the Institute of Policy Studies at NUS. And we're following up on a recent commentary they wrote that was published in Channel NewsAsia, about the worries over rising COVID-19 cases, that they're fuelling racially charged comments, and we wanted to follow up and talk a little bit more about that.

Leadership is always a popular topic of discussion. As our guest Taha Hameduddin, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy says, “if you want to sell a talk or a speaker or a class, you have to put the word leadership in it.” But the fact is, leadership matters. And that’s exactly what Professor Hamedduddin and his co-author Professor Trent Engbers found in their recent study, “Leadership and public service motivation: a systematic synthesis”.

“It’s time for ASEAN to act and lead the de-escalation and mediation process in Myanmar.” That’s the main message of a paper published by The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, co-authored by our guest, Yongwook Ryu, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, together with Bernard Minn and Myat Myat Mon, who are both Master in Public Policy candidates at LKYSPP.

In the 21st century, terrorism continues to be a phenomenon that plagues countries all around the world. In this Foreseeable Podcast, Associate Professor in Practice Francesco Mancini gives us insights on terrorism and how it could change in the future. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian podcast

There was a lot of media attention when a Pew Research Center study came out in late 2020 saying that 61 percent of citizens in 14 major economies hold unfavourable views of China. And especially that public opinion of China in the United States was historically negative. But what about public opinion inside China? How did Chinese citizens view these same 14 countries?  That’s exactly what our guests found out. Their survey revealed that the negative feelings are largely mutual, particularly Chinese views of the US, which 77 percent responded was “very unfavourable" or "somewhat unfavourable" The survey was authored by Songying Fang, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rice University, Adam Liu, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy who are with us now, and Xiaojun Li, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, who was unfortunately unable to join us.

After a tense and controversial election period, Joe Biden is now set to become the next president of the United States. We asked Assistant Professor Yongwook Ryu to give us his perspective on the past four years under the Trump administration, as well as on what the Biden administration has in store for China and the rest of Asia.

Prior to the US elections, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy held an instalment of their Asia Thinker Series titled “Asia’s Takeaways from the US Elections” featuring Visiting Senior Research Fellow Drew Thompson. Now the elections have come and gone and Joe Biden is set to become the 46th President. So we asked Drew to give us a more detailed look at what's in store for a Biden administration. Subscribe to our newsletter

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the nature of education in ways that few other events could. Adopting technology to work, live and learn from home while staying distant from others has affected millions. A recent instalment of the Asia Thinker Series (After the Pandemic) moderated by Associate Professor Suzaina Kadir, Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, discussed what is in store for education in the post-COVID-19 era. After the session, Global-is-Asian caught up with Associate Professor Suzaina Kadir as well as Associate Professor in Practice Francesco Mancini, Associate Dean of Executive Education programmes at the school. Subscribe to our newsletter

Razeen Sally is Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, the main economic-policy think tank in his native Sri Lanka. His research and teaching focuses on global trade policy and Asia in the world economy. He has also written on the history of economic ideas, especially the theory of commercial policy. Subscribe to our newsletter  

James Crabtree has been the Mumbai bureau chief for the Financial Times, a senior policy advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Today, the journalist and author is an Associate Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His latest book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age takes an in-depth look at the “…billionaire class in a radically unequal society” where the country’s top 1% now own nearly 60% of its wealth.

Thirsty Cities: Social Contracts and Public Goods Provision in China and India is a book written with one overarching, broad question in mind: Why does authoritarian China produce more public goods than democratic India? The book’s author is Selina Ho, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. She specialises in Chinese politics and foreign policy, with a focus on the politics of water and infrastructure. I asked her why she decided to write this book. Subscribe to the Global-is-Asian newsletter.  

The third instalment of Asia Thinker Series: Talkback discussed state capacity, trust, and privacy in the post-COVID-19 era. The episode featured Singapore’s Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, John Micklethwait of Bloomberg and Ms Rana Foroohar from the Financial Times and was moderated by Associate Professor in Practice James Crabtree from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. To follow up with some of the topics raised during the episode, we caught up with Anubhav Gupta, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Having joined the school in January this year, Professor Gupta is one of the school’s newer faculty. He says “it's been quite a start”. His research focuses on the charitable or nonprofit sector of the economy and the governance issues surrounding them. He was able to add an interesting perspective to the conversation of governments and their response to COVID-19.

The second episode of the Asia Thinker Series Talkback was titled: After the Pandemic "A Test of Resilience: Workplace Innovation and Strategies" It featured Jane Lim of Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority, Shirin Hamid of the Asian Development Bank and was moderated by Assistant Professor Taha Hameduddin from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and can be viewed on the school’s Facebook page. After the panel, there were still some unanswered questions from several viewers, so we caught up with Professor Hameduddin to give him a chance to respond. I started by asking him what were his key takeaways from the panel?

In his recent book, Climate Change and Natural Disasters:, Vinod Thomas, Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy writes about “The knowledge - action gap,” when it comes to solving the climate crisis. And he should know. In his career, Professor Thomas has been at the forefront of evaluating and making policy recommendations for green growth and action on climate change at institutions like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank Group. What does he mean by the knowledge - action gap, and what are some of the causes?

Hong Kong has been a flashpoint in the news off and on since March of 2019, when thousands of people took to the streets in protest of a proposed extradition bill. Since then the bill was officially withdrawn but the situation remains troubled. More recently, China passed a national security law that could completely change Hong Kong's relationship with the mainland, yet how the law will be implemented remains to be seen. The dynamic between Beijing and Hong Kong is what Alfred Wu, Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy would call a "centre periphery" relationship. That may sound a bit formal, but it incorporates all the drama and uncertainty of the current situation. I asked him to explain his analysis. Later we address the national security law.

2.1 children per woman. That is roughly considered replacement level fertility for a given population.  These days, most advanced economies have total fertility rates lower than that. And some of the lowest fertility rates can be observed in Asia. Like in Japan, South Korea  and Singapore where the rate was 1.14 in 2019.  Assistant Professor Tan Poh Lin from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has called this a crisis " of national importance." And one that will be around for a long time. An expert in population research, she has studied what can be done to reverse this demographic decline.  and has some interesting findings on what works — and what doesn't. 

“Homelessness exists in Singapore.” That’s the first thing that Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Dr Ng Kok Hoe told me when we had a chance to discuss the topic. And it’s true. They are just less visible. It’s often difficult to distinguish a homeless person from any other member of the public, for a variety of reasons that we’ll get into. Dr Ng and his team issued a first of its kind report, “Homeless in Singapore: Results from a Nationwide Street Count,” in November of 2019. They estimated there were between 921 and 1,050 street homeless people in Singapore. Since then, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has become a global problem. Singapore announced a stringent set of measures, called a “circuit breaker” on April 7th, 2020, designed to curb the spread of the virus. Singaporeans are urged to stay indoors whenever possible and access to public spaces are tightly controlled. This has complicated the homeless situation, as rough sleepers are urged to move to shelters that are struggling to cope with the situation. And as Dr Ng pointed out in a recent interview on Channel NewsAsia, many of Singapore’s homeless people have low-wage jobs in the retail and services industries, which have been some of the hardest hit by the pandemic. This conversation was recorded on 15 October 2019:

Recycled drinking water is not a new concept.  In Singapore, it has been around for two decades, but if you talk to people about it, there's still a certain "yuck factor" that surrounds the idea. Leong Ching, Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, dedicates a lot of time studying why people behave the way they do when it comes to the environment. She jokes, sometimes calling it "useless research," but it actually sheds light on the subject and as it turns out, this phenomenon is much more complex than you might think. 

In light of the COVID-19 virus that continues to plague China and other countries, we caught up with Tikki Pangestu, Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Professor Pangestu spent 13 years at the World Health Organization in Geneva as Director of Research Policy and Cooperation Department. He shares his insider's view of the global health response. This podcast episode was recorded on 14 February 2020 and does not take into account more recent developments of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In this episode, we will be speaking to Ong Ye Kung, Singapore's Minister for Education. He's been a Member of Parliament since 2015. And he has held a wide range of government positions, including Deputy Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress - NTUC, Chief Executive of Singapore Workforce Development Agency - WDA, and Deputy Chief Negotiator for the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. Minister Ong recently spoke at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy's Festival of Ideas 2019, where he shared his views on what he considers the key governance issues of our time; like technology disruption, inequality, and climate change. Global-is-Asian met up with the Minister to follow up and have a deeper discussion:

Thomas Friedman, noted author and foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, believes the world is being reshaped today by three simultaneous accelerations: in technology, globalisation and climate change. He likes to call the accelerations hockey sticks, referring to the steep angle they represent on a graph. Friedman travelled to Singapore recently to take part in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy's Festival of Ideas, 2019. He presented his ideas in a panel called "How to Thrive in the Age of Acceleration" He gave his take on how to adapt to all three accelerations at once, then sat down for a discussion with Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute. Later, Global-is-Asian sat down with both of them for this podcast interview.

The idea of racial harmony is deeply ingrained in Singapore's national identity. The national pledge recited daily by school children states, "regardless of race, language or religion" - yet discussing racial integration remains a touchy subject. Dr. Mathew Mathews is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Social Lab at the Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy where, among other things, he conducts research in race, religion, immigrant integration, family aging, and poverty.

Danny Quah is a noted economist, teacher and writer. He has a long list of qualifications and accomplishments, and currently he's Dean and Li Ka Shing professor in economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His work focuses on income inequality, economic growth, and international economic relations. Lately he's been studying the global power shift and the rise of the East and alternative models of global power relations. He's also quite a student of pop culture, and if you stick around, you'll hear exactly what I mean.