Research & Supervisory Interests

Kee Yong has done research on communism and the sacrificed of the Chinese Hakkas in Sarawak, Borneo and has written on various aspects of the silencing of this Cold and post-Cold War political and economic history. Since then, with a SSHRC Standard Research Grant, his research on the recurring conflict in Muslim majority provinces in Thailand's far south focuses with the ways in which regimes of fear affect the way minorities relate to one another and to those in authority – in this case how Muslimness in southern Thailand are produced, under what constraints and structures, and by what technologies and force. His research on communism in Sarawak, Borneo and Thailand's far south is part of a larger project on separatist movements seeking national liberation in different (and yet similar) geopolitical settings. In this regard, his work on Thailand's far south is a continuation of his earlier work insofar as he focuses on the relationship between the construction of minorities - and thus majority - and on issues on violence, history, memory, forgetting, silencing, economics, and political formations.

With a recent SSHRC Insight Grant, Kee Yong is currently working on a potential collaborative project, one that seeks to understand analytically, the potential geopolitical and economic realignment under China's Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) across the World of Ocean Shores, referring here to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean that encompasses parts of East Africa and the Middle East. Overall, the collaborative project will contribute to the literature on the ethnography of the state, which we expect will be influential in shaping the interdisciplinary work that question the naturalness of nation-state and their transformation since neoliberal globalization, and now the BRI’s re-globalization, both theoretically and practically. For his part, Kee will focus on its impact in Malaysia, specifically its effects on the residents in Kuantan, Malaysia. Kee is currently conducting fieldwork at the Malaysia China Kuantan Industrial Park (MCKIP), with villages close to the industrial park, as well as across a spectrum of concerned residents and an environmental NGO in Kuantan. In this regard, this project is a continuation of his earlier work insofar as he focuses on the significance of the hyphen between nation and state. In other words, the well-being of the nation (its people). Kee will be recruiting PhD students as potential RAs for this research project.