Opens at 4:30pm to 6:00pm
This panel discussion seeks to expand the remit of conversations around food as heritage in Singapore and the region. Unpacking how foodways, the senses, and everyday political encounters transpire over time, food is articulated as a political and diplomatic tool, further examined through the political life of sensation and gastronomy. Familiar dishes in Singapore and Southeast Asia are also reframed as knowledge systems and archives, underscoring the importance of food as heritage. Together, the talks demonstrate how food heritage reflects a combination of personal, familial, as well as political identities that speak of communal ties, group and national affiliation.
Speakers:
Kelvin E.Y. Low is Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at NUS. His core areas of research include sensory studies, migration and transnationalism, food and foodways, and social memory and heritage. Some recent publications include books on Bracketed Belonging: Gurkha Migrant Warriors and Transnational Lives (Cornell University Press, 2025), and Sensory Contact Zones in the City (Cambridge University Press; 2026). Alongside various other professional appointments, he also sits on the National Collections Advisory Panel of the National Heritage Board, Singapore.
Khir Johari is the author of The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago, winner of the 2025 Gourmand “Best of the Best in the World for Food Culture” and the NUS Singapore History Prize. His work examines how food, memory, and identity connect communities across the Nusantara. Born in historic Kampong Gelam, he furthers this work through the platform Dialogues by Khir and its symposium, Serumpun, bringing together chefs, thinkers, and makers to celebrate shared food heritage. An avid collector of insular Southeast Asian material culture, Khir also serves on the board of the Asian Civilisations Museum.
Moderator:
Dr. Seng Guo-Quan is a social historian of Southeast Asia and China, with a special interest in the transregional flow and exchange of commodities, people and cultures. His first book, Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia, is a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). He is now co-editing a special issue on the history of capitalism in Southeast Asia for the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and writing his second book, “Market Settlers: Shopkeeper capitalism, race and state making in Southeast Asia (1870-1970s).”
