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. Additionally, I have also explored the challenges of living with differences in multicultural urban contexts, examining issues relating to religion, race and ethnicity in earlier projects.

My PhD research investigates how cities and social lives are reorganised around volumes, using the case of drone practices in Singapore. It explores how drones, as a volumetric technology, shape new ways of seeing, knowing, and experiencing urban space. While drones are traditionally associated with monitoring extensiveness and remoteness, their growing application in dense urban environments presents unique opportunities and challenges that remain underexplored.

Focusing on two case studies—urban infrastructuring tasks (e.g., building and tree inspections) and recreational drone use—I seek to understand how volumetric spaces mediated by drones are increasingly contested and politicised. By analysing these contexts, my work sheds light on the implications of drone technologies in reshaping urban governance, spatial practices, and life in high-density cities.

 

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

• digital geographies, volume, , cultural politics, Asian cities, decolonial theories

• 2023: UK Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership Scholarship:

Chapter in book

• Shee, S. Y. (2025). Propagating Digital Dharma: The Possibilities and Politics of Reinventing Buddhist Meaning in a Digital Age. In Handbook of the Geographies of Religion (1011-1029). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64811-3_55

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, 25(1), 29-48. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2121979
• Shee, S. Y., Woods, O., & Kong, L. (2024). When planetary cosmopolitanism meets the Buddhist ethic: Recycling, karma and popular ecology in Singapore. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49(2), Article e12654. 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
• Shee, S. Y. (2020). The Hundreds, Lauren Berlant, Kathleen Stewart, Duke University Press, Durham and London (2019), 184pp. $24.95 paperback and $94.95 cloth, ISBN (paper) 978-1-4780-0288-8 and ISBN (cloth) 978-1-4780-0183-6. Emotion, Space and Society, 37, Article 100739. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2020.100739