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 Dean's Chair and Associate Professor with tenure 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 work has 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, Business Model Innovation in Asia, and PhD Seminar in Innovation & Entrepreneurship. His research has been featured in leading outlets such as BBC, CNN, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. Adbi holds a PhD from INSEAD, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, and a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee.

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.

Senior leader of leaders in AI and Product Management, with 20+ years of experience and proven track record in academic research, management consulting, technology and financial services industry. Own Google Cloud strategy in Industries in APJ and act as a bridge between Google engineers and researchers, partners, sales teams and industry needs to ensure Google brings relevant novel Agentic AI capabilities to its clients, and monitor adoption and benefits from these capabilities. Lead solutioning and partner with sales, system integrators, regulators and industry associations on technology innovations to deliver 60%+ YoY cloud platform revenue growth for 3+ years.   

Advisor to C-levels of major companies in APJ on Industry trends, Human-Centered AI and approaches to AI Transformation.  Before Google, have been leading large global AI engineering and transformation teams (200+ people with $100+mn budgets) to build and deploy innovative AI solutions, deliver AI adoption strategies and unlock business value with new technologies across industries, both as an employee and as a consultant. Started career in coding neural networks and worked at leadership roles for major companies in Asia, Europe and North America.

Adjunct Associate Professor in AI at National University of Singapore. Stanford University PhD in Operations, Information and Technology. Academic research focused on AI Economics, Human-Centered AI and AI Transformations.  Thought leader on development and adoption of AI solutions powered by Agentic AI and emerging technologies tailored to achieve business goals for FSI and other industries. Speaker at industry and academia conferences.

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 NCD prevention and management, particularly through lifestyle and dietary behavioral change, and more generally on better understanding and leveraging the powerful role of interpersonal networks and social-behavioral dynamics 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 health equity and community engagement, particularly among immigrant communities in high-income countries and populations in low- and middle-income countries.

With strong mixed-methods training, Dr. Ali has particular expertise in novel qualitative methodologies (including visual and mapping-based approaches), quantitative and qualitative analysis of dyadic data, egocentric social network analysis, and longitudinal cohort study analyses. His research spans the United States, East, South, and Southeast Asia, and Australia, 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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