Presenters Biographies
Keynote Speakers
Distinguished Professor Ien ANG is a Professor of Cultural Studies and was the founding Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. She is one of the leaders in cultural studies worldwide, with interdisciplinary work spanning many areas of the humanities and social sciences. Her books, including Watching Dallas, Desperately Seeking the Audience and On Not Speaking Chinese, are recognised as classics in the field and her work has been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Turkish, German, Korean, and Spanish. Her most recent books are Chinatown Unbound: Trans-Asian Urbanism in the Age of China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, co-authored with Kay Anderson et al) and Cultural Diplomacy: Beyond the National Interest (Routledge, 2016, co-edited with Yudhishthir Raj Isar and Phillip Mar). She is the recipient of numerous Australian Research Council grants, including a prestigious ARC Professorial Fellowship (2005-2009). She currently works on two ARC Linkage projects: The Collaborative Museum: Embedding Cultural Infrastructure in the City (with Deborah Stevenson, Malini Sur and Zelmarie Cantillon) and Diversifying the Regional Art Museum (with Veronica Tello and Salote Tawale).
Ou Ning is a Chinese artist, film maker, curator, writer, publisher, and activist, who currently lives and works in New York. He is the director of two films San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2005), chief curator of Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture (2009), jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), member of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum (2011), founding chief editor of the literary bimonthly Chutzpah! (2011- 2014), founder of Bishan Commune (2011-2016) and School of Tillers (2015-2016), visiting professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (2016-2017), and senior research fellow of the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research in Boston (2019-2022). His most recent book is Utopia in Practice: Bishan Project and Rural Reconstruction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Session 2: The Discipline of Arts Management
HOE Su Fern is an arts researcher and educator based in Singapore. She is currently Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Arts and Culture Management Programme at Singapore Management University. She holds a PhD in Culture and Communication from The University of Melbourne. She has spoken, researched and published on arts and cultural policy, urban cultural economies, placemaking and the conditions of artistic and cultural production. She has a wealth of experience in developing, managing and/or coordinating local, regional and global projects in varying formats; all of which advocate for the value of the arts and culture in urban environments. Her practice is informed by her pursuit for practice-oriented and engaged arts research, and her interest in enhancing research impact beyond academia.
Pauline Bianca MA-ALAT, M.A. is a full-time Instructor and the current Art Management Programme Coordinator in the Fine Arts Department of Ateneo de Manila University. She is concurrently a cultural practitioner and a government consultant in culture and the arts. Over the years, she has been working with various cultural and art platforms, engaging in projects that touch upon placemaking, memory studies, community arts, heritage tourism, and cultural participation. She has presented her research works at multiple local and international conferences. She holds a graduate degree in Art Studies: Curatorial Studies from the University of the Philippines – Diliman.
RIKSA AFIATY is an art worker living and working in Yogyakarta. She seeks to contemplate decoloniality in artistic practice and curatorial framework. She has been involved in exhibition making and programming in Jakarta, Maastricht, Ljubljana, Brussels and Gwangju. In 2020, she co-initiated a residency project MARANTAU, which adopts the dynamics of movement, in-exile, distance from familiarity, and adaptation to work patterns and culture in new places.
Session 3: Sustainable Development of Culture and Arts
KWOK Kian Chow (he/him) was senior curator (1992-1994) of the National Museum of Singapore, director (1994-2009) of the Singapore Art Museum, and director (2009-2011) and senior advisor (2011-2015) of the National Gallery Singapore. Kian Chow was associate professor and headed the arts and culture management programme (2015-2019) and Wee Kim Wee Centre (2017-2018) at the Singapore Management University. Kian Chow is an executive board member of the Hamburg-based global scholars and artists network, Global (De)Centre: Diversity, Mobility, Culture. Kian Chow holds the Singapore Public Administration Medal (Silver) and the Officier and Chevalier titles in the French Order of Arts and Letters.
Professor MIHIR DASH IS a specialist in mathematical and statistical modeling. He is actively involved in several research activities and projects. His research interests are diverse, touching several areas of management and some areas of social/legal interest.
VIVEKANAND G. has been a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource at the Alliance School of Business, Alliance University, Bangalore since 2015. Along with teaching he has also handled other roles and responsibilities such as Chairperson, Internship and Dissertation Committee; Program Director, Doctoral Program, Alliance School of Business and Acting Area Chair (OB & HR), Alliance School of Business.
SAKSHI Jain, a museologist, painter, and environmentalist from India, was born in 1996 and currently resides in Jaipur, India’s Pink City. She is an Assistant Curator at the MSMS II Museum, which is run by the Jaipur Royal Family. For the past three years, she has addressed ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ and ‘Climate Action’ inside museums. As a museum curator, she has undertaken historical study on various collections as well as examined digital dynamics of museums.
Benny LIM is Associate Professor of Practice and Director of the Master of Arts in Cultural Management programme with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is also Visiting Professor with the Design School of Taylor’s University (Malaysia) and Adjunct Professor of Communication and Media Studies with UniPegaso (Italy). Over the past two decades, Benny has produced and conceptualised over 70 different performances and arts festivals. He served on the advisory committee of CUHK Shenzhen’s auditorium and concert hall development. He was also a Board Member of Hong Kong Justice Centre between 2014 and 2016. Currently, Benny is the Board Chair of Along the Edge Limited, a non-profit arts organisation in Hong Kong, as well as a member the Programme Sub-committee of The Teng Company.
Elizabeth DE ROZA (www.elizabethderoza.com) is an artist-scholar, performance maker, theatre director, and actor-movement trainer. She is currently the Head of Performing Arts Research and Postgraduate Studies Co-ordinator at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA). Elizabeth’s research focuses on cross-cultural embodied experiences, thinking, and practice through making at the intersections of both decolonial and feminist theories. Elizabeth has been making theatre/performances and teaching in higher education for over two decades. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts (RADA-UK), where she worked with staff members on knowledge exchanges/dialogues on Asian Theatre practices. She co-convenes the Embodied Research Working Group within the International Federation for Theatre Research and serves as an elected executive committee member of IFTR. She is also the editor of the HKAPA academic journal PA:PER and an Assistant Editor for the Journal of Embodied Research.
KHAIRUNNISA (Nisa) is an independent researcher and creative worker. She co-founded Bakudapan Food Study Group after she graduated from the Cultural Anthropology Department at Gadjah Mada University. She is currently an active member in Struggles for Sovereignty. Through her experience working in collectives, she gained interest in experimenting with research practices and learning methods. Nisa’s ongoing research interests are care and domestic works, solidarity and knowledge production which she actively exercises in her practice personally and collectively.
Born in Taiwan, Yun-Cheng CHEN has lived in Detroit, USA and Cologne, Germany. He furthered his service design studies under the guidance of Professor Dr. Michael Erlhoff and Prof. Brigit Mager, who proposed and promoted the concept of Service Design. After his return to Taiwan in 2014, Chen became a trans-disciplinary design activist. His practices centres around serial entrepreneurship, growth hack, UX, ESG, city revitalization, performing arts, deliberative democracy, open movement, and dramaturgy; his strength is design strategy, organizing agile teams on project demand to fulfil design leadership roles in co-creation with clients. He is the ex-cofounder of planett, the first working space combined with international design residency in Taiwan; the strategy director of 2021 Taiwan National Congress; the resident artist of New Taipei Museum, and the initiator of Monday School subscription crowdfunding project.
Session 4: New Ecologies of Space
Dr. Adelina ONG is an early career applied performance researcher based at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, UK). She writes about Compassionate Mobilities (a theory for negotiated living developed from her practice as part of her PhD), death and AI chatbots for mental wellbeing. Her synthetic applied performance and placemaking practices in the metaverse are inspired by Sally Mackey’s anatopic performance practices, urban arts (parkour/art du déplacement, graffiti, skateboarding, street dance), cosplay, Death Cafes and D&D (Dungeons & Dragons). She has published in Theatre Research International and Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (RiDE). She is is currently co-editing Performing Homescapes, an edited collection for Palgrave Macmillan with Prof Sally Mackey.
Adrian TAN is an artist-educator and researcher who has just completed a Ph.D. at Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design and Media (ADM). His research focuses on artists and their social role in the Southeast Asian city of Singapore as read through a study of urban and art historical studies. His artistic practice spans painting, writing, performance, and installation where I examine site-specific, collaborative and performativity modes of art-making through the artists collective The Artists Company.
LIU Hui-Fang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design/Assistant Professor, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan. His expertise is in Architectural Design, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Urban Governance, Cultural-Oriented Urban Regeneration, Social Housing, Circular Economy, Public Art, Spatial Activation and Regeneration of Old houses. He has worked with the Taipei City Government Urban Development Bureau from 2006-2021, and was Adjunct Assistant Professor at Taipei City University from 2017-2020.
Session 5: A Creative Lab Conversation – Innovation and Pivoting
LIM Soon Heng is a graduate with two MAs in English from Brigham Young University and Duke University in the US. He has been a classroom teacher, writer, editor, associate publisher, columnist, first-generation mobile-content-developer manager, book-reviewer, radio producer, and children’s book writer. He has been performing professionally since 1987 and now runs fulltime a successful 11-year-old theatre-in-education traveling troupe, KL Shakespeare Players (KLSP) in Malaysia. His company has performed in the Philippines, South Korea and in Italy at an international theatre competition organized by Spazio Teatro No’hma Teresa Pomodoro. After his company’s performance there, he was invited to be a judge on the Jury of Experts in 14th edition of the competition. KLSP has collaborated with other performing groups in Malaysia, the UK, Japan and France.
Nadya WANG is Founder and Editor of Art & Market (A&M), a multimedia platform that presents specialist content on Southeast Asian art and its community’s artistic, business and curatorial pursuits. She recently launched Fashion & Market (FAM), featuring the interdisciplinary work of Southeast Asian fashion practitioners, and together with Daniela Monasterios-Tan, runs a vodcast on business, culture and pleasures of fashion in Singapore, Asia and beyond. Independently, she is the host of From A to Zig-Zag, a podcast featuring creative endeavours in Southeast Asia. At LASALLE College of the Arts, Nadya is a lecturer in the School of Fashion, overseeing the Cultural and Contextual Studies curriculum in the BA(Hons) Fashion Design and Textiles and BA(Hons) Fashion Media and Industries programmes. In 2022, Nadya was awarded her PhD in History of Art at Courtauld Institute of Art for her thesis “Accidental Career Girl to Working Mother of the Year: Her World, Women and the Fashion Industry, 1974-1989”.
Dr. Samuel Wong is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of The TENG Company, a not-for-profit Major Grant Arts Company in Singapore. TENG is one of the largest traditional arts companies in Singapore. He spearheads the company’s Performance, Academy and Research Divisions and re-invents the possibilities of Chinese music by fusing tradition, innovation and a unique Singaporean identity. Samuel was awarded The Outstanding Young Persons of Singapore Award (2009), The Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Singapore Foundation’s Culture Award (2009) and Singapore Institute of Management’s Teaching Excellence Award (2012) for his work in Music and Education. In 2021, Samuel was listed in Prestige Magazine’s “40 under 40” list of Singapore’s most successful, influential and innovative young people.
Session 6: Networks – Local and Regional
Shu-Shiun KU is the Associate Professor of the Department of Cultural and Creative Industries and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Mt. Dawu College at National Pingtung University, Taiwan. She was the CEO of 2017 National Cultural Congress and Culture White Paper Project commissioned by the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan. Previously, she has worked in the media sector and at a government institution. She obtained a PhD at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds (UK), and was a short-term postdoctoral research fellow at the Leeds Humanities Research Institution in 2016. Her current research focuses on cultural policy, cultural democratisation, cultural economy, creative cluster, the contemporary evolution of cultural and creative industries in East Asia.
Portia PLACINO is an arts educator and writer based in Manila. She received the Ateneo Art Awards – Purita Kalaw Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism in 2021. Previous engagements include a writing fellowship for Kritika and a research fellowship at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Korea. She contributes to ArtAsiaPacific and actively lectures on art history and research in various art schools and institutions. Her recent projects contemplate the position and influence of contemporary art, new media, art history, and theory in an embattled and oppressed society.
Sita Magfira recently got her MA in History in the Public Sphere from Central European University under the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees scholarship. Before pursuing her MA, she worked as an independent researcher/curator in Yogyakarta. She was part of the Biennale Jogja XV Equator #6—“Do We Live in the Same Playground?” curatorial team, where she worked as the assistant curator. She is a member of Lifepatch, a citizen initiative in arts, science, and technology. Her academic interests include oral history, memory, transnational history (particularly on the connection between Eastern Central Europe and Southeast Asia), socialist internationalism, de-colonial studies, and community-engaged art practices. She has BAs in Philosophy (Gadjah Mada University) and Literature (Sanata Dharma University).
Session 7: Pedagogy
Alain Zedrick CAMILING is an educator, arts writer, and curator based in Manila, the Philippines. He currently serves as Chair of the BA Arts Management Program at the De La Salle- College of Saint Benilde, where he has been teaching since 2017. In 2018, he pioneered Bank of the Philippine Islands’ Arts Education Program managing its art collection, museums in Cebu City and Zamboanga City, and art education programs. He convened Benilde’s 2021 Arts Management Undergraduate Conference with support from the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE). Camiling recently co-authored a British Council-commissioned report on Arts and Culture Philanthropy in the Philippines (2021) with Dindin Araneta. Among his research interests are arts management education, formation and engagement of audiences, models, platforms, and gestures in curatorial work and arts management.
Mio YACHITA works as a non-indigenous researcher in the Research & Curatorial Department of the newly established National Ainu Museum (at UPOPOY National Ainu Museum & Park), the first national institution of Japan dedicated to the Indigenous Ainu. Her current research topic is the intangible cultural heritage (especially performing arts) of Ainu. She is also in charge of international liaison for the museum and facilitates communication between curators, researchers and indigenous cultural inheritors from overseas. Aside from the museum, she is currently initiating a research project under the Japanese government academic subsidy (JSPS Kakenhi) about the trajectory of cultural heritage ‘Traditional Ainu Dance’ as a Research Fellow at the Urban Resilience Research Center (UReC), Osaka Metropolitan University. Prior to the current position, she served at the Japan Foundation Tokyo Headquarters, then later appointed as an Assistant Director and Head of Cultural Affairs Department at the Japan Foundation Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2012 and from 2014 served as a deputy director.
YU Weijie graduated from Shanghai Theatre Academy, China (MA under Prof. Zhang Junchuan), and was trained at Eugenio Barba’s International School of Theatre Anthropology (the 4th Edition). He obtained his Ph. D from the Institute of Music Theatre, University of Bayreuth, Germany (under Prof. Susanne Vill), and was also the resident research-fellow at International Research Centre of Interweaving Performance Cultures at Berlin Free University, Germany (2009 – 2010) under Prof. Erika Fischer-Lichte. With research interests covering the areas of actor-training and theatre education of global IHL, he has been working at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore since 2001. In 2016, he was awarded with the Public Service Award (PBM) by the President of the Republic of Singapore. In 2022.
Emerging Scholars
Ali Kennedy SCOTT is a mid-career arts leader and final year MA Candidate at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney. Her research focuses on cultural leadership, gender and equity. Based between Australia and New York City, she is Vice-Chair of the Board of Anne Bogart’s SITI company, a member of the Advisory Board of the Broadway Women’s Fund, and co-producer of the Australian Theatre Festival NYC. As a multi-hyphenate performer she has toured work across 3 continents including her multi-award-winning play, The Day the Sky Turned Black. As director/writer she created an artist- in-residence programme for 6 schools in Western Sydney. In addition to creative pursuits, Ali is a former Bain & Company management consultant, and still advises Fortune 500 companies and new ventures on business strategy. She holds a first class honours degree in Commerce Liberal Studies (Economics) from the University of Sydney and a certificate in professional Acting from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Atsushi TANAKA is currently conducting research on the history of cultural administration in Japan at Kyoto University. He has worked for local government and is experienced in theatre and arts festivals management, and art project implementation. These experiences deepened his interest in the organizations and institutions that support culture and the arts, and he is currently engaged in research away from the arts management field, focusing on the relationship between culture and publicness. He is interested in not only arts promotion policies, but also in cultural affairs administration, such as Geopark and library administration.
After studying philosophy and social sciences at SciencesPo. Paris and La Sorbonne (Paris IV), Cleo Verstrepen graduated in cultural studies at the University Paul Valéry (Montpellier III). They are currently a PhD student at the University of Vincennes Saint-Denis (Paris VIII) and a MEXT-funded research student at Tokyo University of the arts. Their interdisciplinary thesis, at the crossroads of art theory and art history, urban studies and social sciences, focuses on alternative artistic spaces involved in urban revitalization and community empowerment processes in France and Japan. Cleo’s approach to research is creative and integrative. Drawing upon theories of the spatial turn, new ecologies and queer studies, they focus on small scaled micro-political projects which enhance human and non-human agencies. They work for D.D.A Contemporary Art, a curatorial international platform that is developing an exchange artist in residence program between France and Japan, and are co-directing DATSUIJO, a new project space in the district of Yanaka, Tokyo.
Li Su, Susie is a PhD candidate at the School of Art, Design and Media of Nanyang Technological University Singapore. She explores digital art practice with a focus on contemporary museums, with a particular interest in the broader emergent culture of art in the globalized communication network. Her PhD research investigates the new sensibility of art and social sensibility of the art exhibition in the digital age by tackling the socio-cultural meaning of museums, and notions of participation and democracy in art in the digital age. Her research aims to explore the democratic potential of contemporary museums in the digital age by allowing migrant workers to share their labour experiences through art practices. In this way her research pays attention to the new potential of participation from a marginalized group who has been excluded in the cultural sector.
Phạm Út Quyên works as a Program Manager at Heritage Space – an independent art space in Hanoi, where she runs its annual art residency program called Month of Art Practice, which invites international artists to come working and exchanging with the young local artists, and manages Vietnamese Contemporary Art Database (vcad.org.vn) project. In 2020, she joined Mekong Cultural Hub – an initiative which offers personal and professional development opportunities for creative cultural practitioners in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and Taiwan – as a Communication Officer. Quyên has backgrounds in Journalism and Painting. She is currently studying the International Master of the Arts Program in Cultural and Creative Industries (IMCCI) at Taipei National University of the Arts
Shinya AKUTAGAWA is an artist originally from Fukuoka city, Japan and based in Thailand. His art projects are based on site-specific field research in combination with archival research in locations mainly in Southeast Asian countries. His work combines D.I.Y technology-based art objects with interactive drawing animation and sound. These forms come together in his participatory art projects and interactive installations. He is developing a programme for interactive or IoT techniques, to forge connections between places & people. He is currently working for the artistic PhD project at the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts. He holds an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Chulalongkorn University and a BFA in Intermedia Art from Tokyo University of the Arts.
Thomas VAUTHIER was born in 1993 in Paris. After studying architecture, he joined the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Since 2018, he has been developing a new line of research around Japanese socially engaged artistic practices (art projects, アートプロジェクト) as part of his research-creation doctorate at the University of Aix-Marseille. His research focuses on the revitalization potential (economic, demographic, symbolic, aesthetic) of these practices in post-disaster contexts, in relation to spatial issues. Between 2022 -2025 he will study at the Tokyo University of the Arts, with the support of the Japanese MEXT research grant. His research and creation projects have been exhibited in Kyoto (Yokai Soho Gallery, French Institute of Kansai/Kyoto, Tomo Gallery), Tokyo (Spiral Art Center), and in France (Grand Palais, Le Huit Gallery, La Capela, La Générale, École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles, Ricard Corporate Foundation.
Xiaoxiao BAO is a Ph.D. student in the Arts Administration, Education and Policy program at Ohio State University (OSU), USA. Her passion for community-based art education crystallized over a long circuitous academic and professional journey. In 2017, she received her Bachelor’s Degree in art history from the University of California, Berkeley. Bao has since interned and worked at various art spaces, including museums, nonprofit organizations, and college classrooms, pursuing lifelong learning, transforming research into better practice, and advocating diversity and inclusion. Her approach to building an inclusive learning environment is geared toward attuning teaching practices to match diverse learning needs. She recently worked as a researcher at community-based arts organizations in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Through combining community service with academic research, she takes the role of participant-observer to explore and reflect on how engagement practices in communities, museums, and classrooms might inform one another in constructing a critical multicultural future driven by social actions.
Moderators
Audrey WONG is Programme Leader of the MA Arts and Cultural Leadership course at LASALLE College of the Arts and a well-known arts advocate in Singapore. She was the first ‘arts’ Nominated Member of Parliament (2009 – 2011) and former Artistic Co-director of independent, multidisciplinary arts space The Substation. She served on the boards of the Singapore Art Museum, the National Arts Council and currently, Nine Years Theatre. She contributed a chapter to The Routledge Companion to Arts Management (2019) and co-authored a report for UNESCO Bangkok, Backstage: Managing Creativity and the Arts in Southeast Asia (2021). More recently, she contributed essays to a publication on Singapore’s journey of racial harmony and a book on the Nominated Member of Parliament scheme.
Dr. Edmund CHOW is an applied theatre practitioner and educator who has worked across schools, universities, hospitals and prisons in Singapore and New York. Currently, he is the Programme Leader for MA Arts Pedagogy and Practice at LASALLE College of the Arts, where he teaches and supervises postgraduate research projects towards transdisciplinary pedagogies. His research focuses on cultural practices in Afghanistan, cultural ethnography, education, emotions, organisational storytelling, and more recently, stories for patient advocacy. He has just completed a research project funded by the Asian Development Bank on the pre-service and in-service teacher training across Singapore, Finland, Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka.
Felipe CERVERA is a theatremaker, writer, and award-winning theatre and performance academic. He teaches at LASALLE College of the Arts, overseeing Contextual Studies in the School of Dance and Theatre. Felipe’s research interests are collaborative pedagogies, performance research methodologies, and outer space’s social and artistic production. He has published widely on these and other topics in international peer-reviewed journals and edited collections. Felipe is the Editor of Global Performance Studies and Associate Editor of Performance Research. He sits on the Board of Directors of Performance Studies international (PSi) and the Executive Committee of the UK’s Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA).
Grey YEOH is an expert arts administrator and producer with networks in Asia Pacific, Australia, the UK and a bit of Europe. He is adept at developing implementation strategy by identifying and cultivating key stakeholders, and building long-term and sustainable partnership in the arts and culture sector.
Dr. Jonathan GANDER is an experienced academic with a specialism in strategic management. He is currently the Head of the School of Creative Industries at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. He has held lectureships at the University of East Anglia, Westminster University, Kingston University and the University of the Arts, London and visiting professorships at universities in Shanghai, Sweden and Moscow. He publishes on the creative sector particularly the fashion and music industries and his book Strategic Analysis: a creative and cultural industries perspective, looks at how strategizing needs to be adapted to meet the specific challenges of creative sector firms.
Kai BRENNERT is the Founder of edge and story, an evaluation, research, and policy consultancy at the intersection of culture and sustainable development. Currently based in Cambodia, he has lived in Germany, Thailand, Iraqi Kurdistan, Australia, the UK, and Aotearoa New Zealand, and worked in more than 20 countries across four continents on partnerships, strategy and evaluation. Kai is also the author of curious patterns, a newsletter that explores current issues and policies in the field of arts, impact, international cooperation and sustainable development.
Michelle LOH is a Lecturer with the School of Creative Industries, LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore. She is currently completing her PhD studies on “Evolution of Multiculturalism and Cultural Policies in Singapore” with the University of Western Australia. She is a bilingual arts manager and researcher in cultural policy, diversity, audiences, music and the traditional arts. Her most recent publication is ‘Superdiversity and Cultural Policies in Post-Pandemic Singapore’ in ENCATC Cultural Policy Tracker (2022), and she is the co-editor of Traditional Chinese Music in Contemporary Singapore (2020). Michelle currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Poetry Festival Singapore and on the Organising Committee of the Singapore Literature Conference 2023.
Dr. Natalia GRINCHEVA is a Programme Leader in Arts Management at LASALLE College of the Arts and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Studio at the University of Melbourne. She is an internationally recognized expert in innovative forms and global trends in contemporary museology, digital diplomacy, and international cultural relations. Her most recent publications are Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age (2020) and Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (2019). Currently she is working on a co-authored monograph, Geopolitics of Digital Heritage with Cambridge University Press. Dr Grincheva’s professional engagements include her dedicated work for the International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (2011–2015) and currently for the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance.
Sunitha JANAMOHANAN has worked in the arts since 1999 with a portfolio that covers a range of art forms and creative industries. She has been an arts manager, curator, producer, venue manager and heritage manager in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia. She has an MA in Arts Administration from Columbia University, New York, and is presently a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Her research interests include community and socially engaged arts practice; local arts management models in Southeast Asia; and the intersections of social practice, labour, organisational behaviour and cultural leadership.