I am a comparative-historical and political sociologist of empire and state-formation, modernization, and development. I study how law and religion organize elites and build states. I specialize in the colonial and modern histories of Southeast Asia. I received my doctorate in Sociology from the University of Chicago and postdoctoral training from the University of Michigan. Currently, I am a lecturer at the National University of Singapore College and am jointly appointed in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. 

Arzi Adbi is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Strategy & Policy at National University of Singapore Business School. He serves as Associate Editor of Strategic Management Journal and holds a Research Affiliate appointment at the Sustainable and Green Finance Institute (SGFIN). His research investigates grand challenges in strategy and sustainable development, with a focus on emerging markets. His works have been published in Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Academy of Management Journal, Nature Cities, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. His research has won best paper awards from major academic associations, including the Strategic Management Society and the Academy of International Business. He teaches Strategic Management, Corporate Strategy, Business Model Innovation in Asia, and Ph.D. Seminar in Innovation & Entrepreneurship. His research has been featured in leading outlets such as BBC, CNN, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Dr. Raahi Adhya is a Lecturer in Global Narratives at NUS College. She holds a PhD in Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies, an MA and an MPhil in Women's Studies and a BA in English Literature. Funded by the SOAS Research Studentship and a Charles Wallace India Trust grant, her PhD research was on Bengali fairytales published for children in the context of the anti-colonial nationalist movement in the Bengal region in British India. Specifically, she looked at the gendered and aged tellers, listeners and characters who have historically defined this literary genre. Before joining NUS College, she has tutored postgraduate students at SOAS on a range of Cultural Studies theories and methodologies.

Sumit Agarwal is Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Business School and a Professor of Economics and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is the Managing Director of Sustainable and Green Finance Institute at NUS. He is also the President of Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research .

In the past, he has held positions as a Professor of Finance at the Business School, Georgetown University. Before that he was a senior financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and prior to joining the Chicago Fed, he was a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America.

Sumit’s research interests include issues relating to household sustainablity, financial institutions, household finance, behavioral finance, and real estate markets. He has published over one hundred and fifty research articles in economics and finance journals among others. Additionally, he has co-written six books titled Why We Feel Blue When the Air is Grey , Kiasunomics 3, Introduction to Household Financial Management , Kiasunomics 2, Household Finance: A Functional Approach , and Kiasunomics , and also co-edited two collected volumes titled Impact of COVID-19 on Asian Economies and Policy Responses, and Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages.

He writes regular op-ed’s in the Straits Times and is featured on various media outlets like the CNA, BBC, CNBC, and Fox on issues relating to finance, banking, and real estate markets. Sumit’s research is widely cited in leading newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the U.S Presidents Report to Congress. He also runs a Podcast on household financial decision making called Kiasunomics.

I’m a historian of modern India and the Indian Ocean World, specialising in the political economy of social policy in the colonial and early postcolonial periods. My fluency in Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi supports my multi-sited research.

I earned my PhD in History and MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies (Distinction) from Cambridge University, where I held the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and Holland Rose Studentship. I received the CA Bayly Best Dissertation Prize for my MPhil.

My first monograph, Sober State: Origins of Alcohol Prohibition in India, was published by Cambridge University Press as part of the ICAS: MP book series, “Metamorphoses of the Political” in early 2026. The first book to be published on prohibition's origins in India, the book explains the reasons for the policy's persistence, despite its being a sobering site of consensus-building for successive governments. Sober State was supported by the NUS FASS Book Strategising Workshop Grant and FASS Book Publicity Scheme.

My peer-reviewed articles on the Dravidian movement's transnational impact, and the politics of alcohol prohibition in India have been published in Modern Asian Studies and The Indian Economic and Social History Review. 

I currently serve as Deputy Head of the South Asian Studies Programme at NUS. An experienced educator, I convene large undergraduate lectures and smaller seminar-style classes, and supervise graduate students on various topics in modern Indian history.

Dr. Ali’s research focuses on empowering family and community members to be agents of health promotion and, more generally, better understanding and leveraging the powerful role of interpersonal networks in health. He explores innovative, community-driven strategies to improve health outcomes, including the use of digital platforms such as mHealth and social media to engage and support these efforts. His work also examines the complex socio-ecological factors that shape dietary behaviors and cardiovascular health, with an emphasis on creating equitable and sustainable interventions.

With strong mixed-methods training, Dr. Ali has particular a expertise in novel qualitative methodologies, as well as dyadic and social analysis. His research spans multiple countries, including the United States, China, Australia, Pakistan, and Singapore, covering topics such as social and family dynamics, program evaluation, food environments, and digital health interventions. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, Dr. Ali strives to develop pragmatic, culturally tailored public health strategies that create meaningful, sustainable impact at both the community and systems levels.

Dr. Khairudin Aljunied (PhD SOAS, London) is a tenured Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is concurrently a Senior Fellow (formerly and Professor as well as Malaysia Chair of Islam in Southeast Asia at the Alwaleed Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University). He has held visiting full professorships at Columbia University, USA (Fulbright Program) in 2013, University of Brunei Darussalam in 2021-2022 and the University of Malaya in 2022-2023. In 2024 and 2025, he is listed as one of the 500 influential Muslims in the world in 2024 and 2025 (Scholars Category) : https://themuslim500.com 

A recognized specialist in the field of intellectual history, Khairudin Aljunied’s research focuses on the connections between Southeast Asia and Global Islam. He is the author and editor of thirteen books and more than thirty internationally refereed articles. Recent publications include Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Southeast Asian Islam in Comparative Perspective (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Hamka and Islam: Cosmopolitan Reform in the Malay World (Cornell University Press, 2018), Islam in Malaysia: An Entwined History (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Shapers of Islam in Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022). His new book is entitled Contemplating Sufism: Dialogue and Tradition Across Southeast Asia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2024).I'll

I welcome postgraduate students who are interested to work on any topics relating to the history of Islam in Southeast Asia, with a view of comparing the experiences of communities here with other groups in Asian and non-Asian societies.

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