Cherian George, born in Singapore in 1965, is a journalist-turned-academic who has written on Singapore politics for 30 years. After studying social and political sciences at Cambridge and journalism at Columbia, he spent the 1990s working at The Straits Times. He received his PhD in communication at Stanford in 2003 and is currently a professor of media studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He researches media freedom, censorship, and hate propaganda in Asia and around the world. His nine books include Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and its Threat to Democracy (MIT Press), which was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the 100 Best Books of 2016.
Dr Ng Kok Hoe is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Case Insights Unit at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He also founded the Social Inclusion Project at LKYSPP in 2020, a research programme dedicated to analysing how public policies shape opportunities for participation. He received his PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he was a UK Commonwealth Scholar and won the Titmuss Prize. His research is concerned with income security, minimum income standards, housing policy and homelessness. He led the first nationwide street count of homelessness in Singapore and is co-editor of the book They told us to move: Dakota—Cassia (Ethos Books, 2019), which examines the impact of relocation on a social housing community.
T. Sasitharan, Sasi, is Co-Founder and Director of the Intercultural Theatre Institute. ITI is a practice-based, full-time actor training conservatory, and one of the most reputable theatre schools in the world. Sasi and the late Kuo Pao Kun conceived and inaugurated ITI in 2000. He was Artistic Director of Substation (1995–2000), Singapore’s only independent arts centre, and was the Theatre and Visual Arts critic of The Straits Times (1988-1995). From 1983 to ’88, he taught Philosophy at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Sasi has authored articles ranging from commentaries and essays to reviews of performances and exhibitions, and international catalogue texts. He regularly speaks at conferences on arts, education and creativity. Over 45 years he’s been a theatre practitioner, working as actor, performer, director, producer, and teacher. In 2012 he received the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest award for artists, in Mar 2022 the Third Harvard Fellow of the Harvard Club of Singapore, and in May 2022 NUS’ FASS Distinguished Arts and Social Sciences Alumni Award.
Carol Yuen is a legal researcher with a focus on environmental and international law. She was previously a practising lawyer working across civil, criminal and public interest litigation cases. Notably, she acted in the first-ever disciplinary complaint against public prosecutors in Singapore and in a rare criminal defamation case. She was also lead legislative assistant for a Member of Parliament.
Daryl Yang is a practising Singapore-qualified lawyer, Fulbright scholar and social justice activist. He currently serves as Honorary Secretary of the Disabled People’s Association Singapore and has worked with Singaporean and international civil society organisations to advocate for queer, feminist and disability justice. As an undergraduate, Daryl co-founded the Inter-University LGBT Network and the Community for Advocacy and Political Education (CAPE). His academic research focuses on the law’s oppressive and liberatory potential as it relates to vulnerable and marginalised communities.
Haolie Jiang co-founded the Community of Advocacy and Political Education (CAPE) when he was an undergraduate at Yale-NUS College. He led CAPE’s transition off campus into an independent community in 2023. He is also a long-time senior volunteer at Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a migrant worker NGO, since 2015 and supports its research advocacy arm. Reflecting both his work in civil society and in academia, Haolie’s research interests are in migrant labour rights, democracy and authoritarian studies, and South-East Asia development.
Joel Yew is currently a PhD student at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include ethnic politics, party politics, and democracy with a regional focus on Southeast Asia.
Remy Choo was one of the lawyers involved in the challenges to S377A in 2013 and in 2018, and was the first Singaporean lawyer to be awarded the International Bar Association’s Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award. Remy is the founder and Joint Managing Director of RCL Chambers Law Corporation. Remy represents a wide range of clients as lead counsel at all levels of the Singapore Courts, including Appellate Division of the High Court and Court of Appeal. Before setting up RCL Chambers Law Corporation, Remy started practice in one of the largest disputes practices in Singapore, before building a team of top-ranked litigators in his previous firm, which he co-led for 9 years.
Isaac Neo is a writer based in Singapore. He is a member of the climate justice collective SG Climate Rally. He co-hosts a series on the socialservice.sg podcast, where he speaks to people involved in expanding the communities and spaces for sustained civic engagement and political participation in Singapore. His work on civil society has been published in publications such as Jom, Rice Media, and TODAY.
Kristian-Marc James Paul (he/him/his) is an activist and writer. He is a member of climate justice collective SG Climate Rally and is one of the co-editors of Brown is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore (Ethos Books, 2022), an anthology on minority race narratives in Singapore. He has also written for news and literary publications such as Channel NewsAsia, Jom and Mekong Review. Kristian also facilitates intergroup dialogues, partnering with organisations to run community discussions on masculinity and male allyship.
Walid Jumblatt Abdullah is an academic and political scientist. He is the host of Teh Tarik With Walid, an online show where he hosts politicians and political influencers, engaging them in a dialogue. He researches on Southeast Asian Politics, especially the relationships between religion and the state. He is the author of Islam in A Secular State: Muslim Activism in Singapore, published by Amsterdam University Press in 2021. He has also published many articles in internationally peer-reviewed journals.
Irie Aman is a creative and community builder. They were the Editor-in-Chief of The Local Rebel, Singapore's first intersectional feminist magazine. Once a year, they organise Solidarithrift, a thrift market for mutual aid. Currently, Irie hosts dink, an open mic night for all mediums and artists, and leads QUASA, a Queer Muslim collective. If they aren’t trying to be in five different places at once, you can find them doing food reviews and tarot readings.
Reetaza Chatterjee is the founder of Your Head Lah!, a brown and queer-led mental health collective in Singapore. These days, she works on convening activists, communities and movements from all over the world, so we can strategise with, learn from and work in active solidarity with one another. Reetz is also a co-founder of Girlfriend Girlfriend, a queer rave collective based in Bengaluru that aims to explore pleasure and play alongside our fight for liberation.
Kenneth Paul Tan is a tenured and multiple-award-winning Professor of Politics, Film, and Cultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, which hired him under its Talent100 initiative in 2021. He works at the School of Communication, Academy of Film, Department of Government and International Studies, and Smart Society Lab. Previously, he was Vice Dean of the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy during the most rapid and critical years of its growth, serving in its senior leadership team for almost a decade. He is a member of the National Museum of Singapore’s Advisory Board. He was the founding chair of the Asian Film Archive’s Board of Directors and the chair of the Board of Directors of theatre company The Necessary Stage (Singapore).
Corinna Lim has been the Executive Director of AWARE, the Association of Women for Action and Research, since 2010. As a dedicated women's rights activist, she has been an advocate for issues such as the promotion of gender-equal workplaces, the addressing of gender-based violence, and the provision of greater support for single parents and lower-income women. In addition to her advocacy work, she spearheaded the establishment of the Sexual Assault Care Centre at AWARE in 2011. Ms Lim has a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University and is a Fulbright Scholar. She graduated with an LLB from the National University of Singapore and was called to the Singapore Bar in 1988.
Alex Au advocates on behalf of migrant workers and the LGBT community, and was the first Singaporean to receive the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law. He is the vice-president of migrant workers' rights group Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2).
Suraendher Kumarr is a 29-year-old community organiser at workers' rights group, Workers Make Possible (WMP). Prior to co-creating WMP, he was involved with activism relating to democracy, campus sexual offences, and climate justice. He was formerly a member of Community of Advocacy and Political Education (CAPE) and SG Climate Rally (SGCR). Kumarr hopes to expand the space for workers of all backgrounds and occupations to fight for their rights and welfare. On 1 May 2023, WMP restarted the age-old tradition of organising a public labour day rally for all workers in Singapore to participate in at Hong Lim Park. A labour day rally will be held on the same date and place this year.
