Staff profile

Previous Education and Employment

Prior to my PhD, I read Geography at the National University of Singapore. I also worked as a research assistant at the School of Social Sciences and College of Integrative Studies at the Singapore Management University.

Research

I work at the intersections of social, cultural, and urban geography. My research focuses on the politics and practices of digital technological changes in Asian cities, with specific work based around Singapore. I have also written about the challenges of living with difference (urban multiculturalism) in the contexts of religion, race and ethnicity, amongst others. A core part of my work is to open up other ways of seeing, living in, and knowing the world by engaging with the politics of knowledge production. I address this question through adopting post- and decolonial perspectives.

My current PhD research looks at the emergence of what could be understood as urban drone geographies, as drone technologies are increasingly integrated into contemporary urban functions. As technologies traditionally concerned with monitoring extensiveness and remoteness, drones have recently been positioned for use in urban environments -- which often have some of the highest densities in the world. My research hopes to understand the impetus, opportunities, and consequences of mobilising such technologies in the city to reflect on questions surrounding the technological mediation of volumetric urban spaces, changing human-space-technology interactions, the role of Asian knowledges in contemporary and future urban governance, and more.

My project is supported by UK's ESRC NINE Doctoral Training Partnership. A short description of my project could be found here.

• digital geographies, cultural politics, religion, Asian cities

• 2024: Graduate Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Singapore:
• 2023: UK Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership Scholarship:
• 2021: American Association of Geographers Jacques May Thesis Prize:
• 2018: Tun Dato Sir Cheng-Lock Tan Master’s Scholarship, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore:

Journal Article

• Gao, Q., Woods, O., Kong, L., & Shee, S. Y. (2024). Lived religion in a digital age: technology, affect and the pervasive space-times of ‘new’ religious praxis. Social and Cultural Geography, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2121979
• Shee, S. Y., Woods, O., & Kong, L. (2023). When planetary cosmopolitanism meets the Buddhist ethic: Recycling, karma and popular ecology in Singapore. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12654
• Shee, S. Y. (2023). Moving as a ‘scrawny, brown body’: navigating sticky emotional geographies of physical activity in Singapore. Gender, Place and Culture, 30(1), 70-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2021.1994931
• Shee, S. Y. (2023). Eating to become ‘good’ citizens: exploring the visceral biopolitics of eating in Singapore. Cultural Geographies, 30(1), 35-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/14744740211065047
• Shee, S. Y. (2022). Making sense of digital health data: Negotiating epistemological tensions of everyday eating in Singapore. Geoforum, 136, 92-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.09.001
• Woods, O., & Shee, S. Y. (2021). The digital void of voluntourism: Here, there and new currencies of care. Geoforum, 124, 46-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.05.016
• Woods, O., & Shee, S. Y. (2021). Doing it for the 'gram? The representational politics of popular humanitarianism. Annals of Tourism Research, 87, 103107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.103107