My core discipline is constitutional and administrative law. Over the years, I have developed two strong research trajectories within this core discipline, namely in constitutional law in Singapore, and in constitutional law and religion. On the former, I am the sole editor of a collection of original essays examining recent developments in constitutional law and interpretation in Singapore. This collection, published by Routledge, has received good reviews. It is only the second of such a volume dedicated to constitutional law in Singapore. In addition, I have also been invited to be a co-guest editor for the Singapore Academy of Law Journals Special Issue on Public Law. Guest editors for the journals special issues have been predominantly full professors.
I have also developed a body of work in constitutional law and religion. My scholarship on law and religion is thus distinctive for taking a constitutional approach to the subject and for employing case law and constitutional practices from Asian jurisdictions to inform existing theoretical accounts. In my view, Asia offers a body of data and practices with interesting implications for existing constitutional theory as well as theories of law and religion. These practices are often undertheorized and under-examined. While my work uses existing theoretical accounts to analyze and comprehend local practices, it also challenges those accounts as they are often based on Anglo-European experiences. In doing so, my work aims to identify deficiencies in those theoretical accounts and propose improvements to them.
At the moment, I am developing a more comparative aspect to my research. While my scholarship already has a comparative bent, I am consciously developing this further so as to expand the scope of my research. I have several research projects that focus on comparative constitutional law, including comparative constitutional law and religion, in Southeast Asia. This is in line with my long-term research ambition, which is to, as I call it, mainstream Asia. What this means is that I want to introduce Asian practices and experiences into general scholarship in my field and to advance theoretical accounts based on these experiences as dominant theories that could also be applied and tested against other non-Asian experiences.
Thus far, I have published in leading journals in my field, namely the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON), the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion (OJLR), and the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (SJLS). I-CON is the top international journal on global constitutional law, whereas the OJLR is now well-established as a top journal in law and religion scholarship. The SJLS is a NUS Law Faculty publication that is widely regarded as the top academic journal on Singapore law. My work has been cited by well-known constitutional scholars. It also has inter-disciplinary relevance and has been referred to by prominent scholars in other fields.
I have also demonstrated research independence and leadership by initiating several research projects involving established as well as emerging scholars in my field. I am the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator of nine NUS-based research grants and one external research grant. These grants are aimed at producing original and innovative research, as well as building collaborations with faculty colleagues and academics in peer and aspirant universities. My track record shows that I am able to bring together strong academics to produce quality work.
I am building an international reputation within my fields of research and have increased my international visibility in recent times. I have been invited to speak at international conferences as well as to give seminars at various universities. For instance, in January 2017, I was one of five speakers invited to speak on the Law & Religion Section panel at the Association for American Law Schools (AALS). In addition, in June 2017 alone, I was specially invited to speak at three institutions, namely the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany), Leiden Law School (the Netherlands), and the Westf??lische Wilhelms-Universit??t M??nster (Germany). I have also been invited to be a guest editor (with HP Lee) for a special issue on the Journal of International and Comparative Law (published by Sweet & Maxwell).
Looking forward, I have an ambitious research agenda for the next five years. During this time, I plan to continue to develop and deliver high-quality publications in my two main research trajectories constitutional law in Singapore and constitutional law and religion. My plan is to expand my research further into comparative work in both these areas. I will do so specifically in two ways.
First, I am developing research in comparative constitutional law in Southeast Asia. This remains an under-developed and under-theorized area of research. I intend to conduct and complete various research projects to contribute original scholarship as well as strengthen my research network and
international collaborations. As mentioned earlier, my work in this field will fuel my long-term research agenda of mainstreaming Asian scholarship in constitutional and comparative law, making Asian constitutional practices and theories built upon those practices part of the dominant narrative within constitutional and comparative law. This will entail continuing to publish in leading journals in my field using Asian practices to critique existing theory and construct new ones.
Existing research projects that will contribute to this research plan include developing an account of Judicial Transformations of Constitutional Amendment, which will contribute to existing scholarship on the topic of constitutional amendment. I organized a panel comprised of experts on this topic and presented my theoretical account at the recent ICON-S conference in Copenhagen in July 2017. In addition, I am collaborating with a co-author on two comparative constitutional law projects, namely on Constitutional Pluralism in Southeast Asia: A Positive Account and on Constitutional Amendments in Southeast Asia: Social and Political Underpinnings. These projects will bring together country studies providing thick descriptions on constitutional practices in the respective jurisdictions. They will thus add to existing data on constitutional practices in various under-studied jurisdictions, which will help us to better analyze and critique existing theories on constitutional pluralism and constitutional amendment.
Secondly, I want to develop an emerging research area in comparative constitutional law and religion. While there is a lot of work being done on law and religion, only a segment of that scholarship employs a comparative constitutional law approach. In this regard, I will be working on a monograph that will further develop ideas in my doctoral dissertation titled Beyond Separationism: Constitutional Law and State Entanglement with Religion. While I have published two articles based on my dissertation, I have taken my time to develop my theoretical insights. I will be spending the next three to five years developing my ideas into a monograph. In addition, I am helming a research project under the NUS-Humboldt University Research Project Grant which will curate a series of original pieces examining State Responses to Religious Diversity in Singapore, with comparative analyses to German constitutional experience.
The completion of these research projects will further establish my reputation as a scholar in comparative constitutional law. These plans are ambitious but I believe that my track record shows that I am capable of successfully completing all of them.