Keynote lectures

  • Dec 2024 Urban Mediations: International Conference on the Narratives, Ecologies and Poetics of the City, University of Hong Kong
  • Dec 2024 4th Annual Conference of Macao Studies, University of Macau
  • Jun 2024 19th Singapore Graduate Student Forum on Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore

Invited talks and seminars

  • 18 Jun 2026 Speaker, “The Free Shuttle: Infrastructures of Extraction in Three Casino Cities”, Sustainable Urban Development and School of Geography, University of Oxford
  • 29–30 Apr 2026 Moderator, “Gaming and Nationalism in Asia”, Asia Research Institute, Singapore
  • 28–29 Nov 2024 Invited Panellist, “Connecting Imaginaries: Conversations on Arabia–Asia–Africa”, Asia Research Institute, Singapore
  • 30 Aug 2024 Invited Speaker, “The Morality of Money”, NUS College Seminar Series, Singapore
  • 12 Mar 2024 Guest Lecture, “Public Housing, Citizenship and Inequality”, NUS College, Singapore
  • 12 Oct 2023 Invited Panellist, Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms, Bristol, UK
  • 24 Mar 2023 Invited Panellist, “Planning for a Liveable City”, NUS Cities, Singapore
  • 21 Apr 2022 Invited Speaker, “Writing the History of the Built Environments of Asia: Materiality, Translations and Colonialism”, Cornell University
  • 13 Apr 2022 Invited Speaker, “Casino to Integrated Resort: Architecture and Power in a Small City-State”, University of New South Wales, Australia
  • 17 Feb 2022 Invited Speaker, “The World in the Casino: Contract, Model, Exhibition”, Stockholm Centre for Organization Research and Centre for Global Asian Studies, Stockholm University
  • 8 Feb 2022 Speaker, “The World in the Casino: Contract, Model, Exhibition”, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala University
  • 24 Feb 2021 Discussant, “Integration and Disintegration in Inter-Asian Perspective”, Inter-Asia Academy (jointly organised by the SSRC, New York, and ARI, Singapore)
  • 26 Aug 2020 Invited Speaker, “Casino Urbanisms: Spectacles, Enclaves, Networks”, Yale-NUS Distinguished Lecture Series
  • 2019 Invited Participant, “From Vice to Icon: Moral Laundering as Critique of the Present”, Gambling and Philosophy, University of Macau
  • 2018 Moderator and Participant, Summer Institute in Urban Studies, Asia Research Institute, Singapore
  • 2017 Invited Participant, “Casino Urbanisms: From Las Vegas to Asia”, 10 Years of Global Metropolitan Studies at Berkeley, UC Berkeley
  • 2017 Invited Participant, Transregional Junior Fellowship Workshop, Social Science Research Council (New York), Chiang Mai
  • 2016 Selected Panellist, Workshop on “Geo-political Economies of (Post)Developmental Urbanization in East Asia”, Social Science Research Council, Seoul
  • 2015 Selected Panellist, Workshop on “Casino Spaces as Enclaves of Development or Lawlessness”, International Institute for Asian Studies, Siem Reap
  • 2015 Invited Speaker, “From Casino to Integrated Resort: Nationalist Modernity and the ‘Art of Blending’”, Asia Research Institute, Singapore
  • 2015 Invited Participant, “The Future of Urban Studies and Asia’s Place in It”, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
  • 2014 Invited Participant, Workshop on “Casino and Development in Asia”, University of Macau, Macau
  • 2014 Invited Speaker, “Las Vegas in Singapore: Politics of Architectural Design across the Pacific Rim”, Yale School of Architecture, New Haven
  • 2013 Invited Participant, “Hybrids and Thresholds – Singapore’s Planning Experiments”, Future Cities Lab/ETH Zurich, Singapore

Conferences and workshops (select)

  • 2026 Organiser, “Gambling Harms and Urban Growth”, NUS, Singapore (Benjamin Meaker Award, University of Bristol)
  • 2025 Organiser and panellist, “City Air Makes Unfree: Illiberalism, Law and the Urban Condition”, Urban Affairs Association Conference, Vancouver
  • 2024 “Casinos as Infrastructures of Extraterritorial Taxation”, Urban Affairs Association Conference, New York
  • 2024 “The World in the Casino”, East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography, Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • 2024 Organiser and panellist, “Writing Comparatively”, Asia Research Institute, NUS
  • 2023 “Locating a Popular Illegality: The Scholar, the Judge and the Police”, Law and the Underclass Workshop, Asia Research Institute, NUS
  • 2023 Convenor and chair, “What is Casino Capitalism? Perspectives from Asia”, AAS-in-Asia, South Korea
  • 2022 Co-convenor, “Interasian Legalities”, Asia Research Institute, NUS
  • 2021 “Architecture as Evidence: Reflections on Doing Architectural History in the Legal Archive”, Society of Architectural Historians
  • 2020 Panel chair, “Interdisciplinarity, Critique and Risk: New Directions in Urban and Architectural Histories in and of Asia”, Asian Studies Association of Australia
  • 2019 “Casino as Genealogy: Reflections on the Criticality of Historical Distance”, EAHN and SAHANZ, “Distance Looks Back”
  • 2018 “Casino Urbanisms: Networks of Profit and the Architectural Fix”, AAS-in-Asia, New Delhi
  • 2018 “The Paradox of Nationalist Modernity: Urban Evictions and the Criminalization of Everyday Life in Singapore, 1960s–70s”, International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments
  • 2016 Co-convenor, “Cities by Experts for the People”, AAS-in-Asia
  • 2014 Convenor, “Casino Urbanism: Mobilities, Scales, Politics”, AAS-in-Asia
  • 2014 “Failed Citizens: Gambling and Nation-Building”, Asian Cities: Colonial to Global, University of Oxford
  • 2013 “Vice in the City: Embarrassments of Nationalism in Singapore, 1950–80s”, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden
  • 2013 “Criminalizing Vice: The ‘Common Gaming House’ in Colonial Singapore”, Association for Asian Studies, San Diego