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SEAC Visiting Fellow - Dr. Jeremy Siow

Introducing SEAC Visiting Fellow Dr. Jeremy Siow, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Quantitative Political Science at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. His research examines education policy and intergroup relations in Singapore and Malaysia, with a focus on how language-of-instruction policies and civic education shape ethnic politics. He also studies broader influences on ethnic politics in the region, including how Chinese propaganda shapes diaspora identity and communal loyalties, and how democratic reforms affect ethnic coalitions and intergroup competition in Malaysia.

What will you be working on during your time as a SEAC Visiting Fellow?

During my time at SEAC, I plan to develop two research projects. The first draws on an original corpus of over 1,200 Friday sermon texts from mosques in Malaysia and Singapore since the early 2010s. With advances in AI, we want to use large language models to identify salient themes in these texts and trace how they have evolved over time. Fundamentally, we hope to offer a descriptive account of how state-sponsored religious institutions have framed key social and political issues across the two countries. [New paragraph] The second project takes a more historical and exploratory direction. Building on my broader interest in language politics, I intend to use my time at SEAC and the National Archives at Kew to investigate the colonial origins of language-of-instruction policy in Malaysia and Singapore. More broadly, I’m interested in why some postcolonial states retained colonial languages as their official medium of instruction while others pivoted to native languages at the point of independence. Archival research at Kew will allow me to examine how British colonial administrators approached language policy, and how these decisions shaped the institutional legacies that newly independent governments either inherited or contested.

What led you to your field of study, or what inspired your interest in these topics?

My interest in these topics grew from two sources of inspiration. During my PhD studies, I became increasingly dissatisfied with how the field of education politics was heavily centered on the American case, leaving the experiences of countries outside the US largely unexamined. This motivated me to bring non-Western perspectives into the conversation, where questions of education policy are deeply entangled with ethnicity, nation-building, and state power. The second source of inspiration was my PhD advisor, Margit Tavits, whose work on language politics made me see language as far more than a marker of identity. Language carries both social and cognitive consequences. It shapes how we relate to others across group lines and how we come to understand the world around us.

How do you like to relax and unwind?

Outside of work, I enjoy cycling, watching Japanese anime, and exploring the many parks and green spaces the UK has to offer.