Inter-Asia Seminar Series: Youth in search of a future: living precariously in compounded crisis
Youths across Asia face unprecedented challenges amidst compounded crises of climate change, geopolitical conflict, and socioeconomic inequality. This roundtable discussion delves into the precarious realities shaping their lives while also searching for manifestations of agency and signs of hope. Panelists will explore how youths in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia are reconceptualizing their social roles and political identities as they envision a future marked by great uncertainty.
This event will take place online via Zoom. Register to attend the event online here.
Speakers:
Dr Mohd Amirul Rafiq Abu Rahim: Amirul is a Research Associate at the Khazanah Research Institute (KRI). He specialises in labour market analysis, focusing on youth unemployment issues and the career progression of tertiary[1]educated young workers in Malaysia. His work extends to the analysis of wage structure and investigating the issue of financialization, specifically examining the impact of education loans on accumulated debt burdens in Malaysia. Amirul holds a Ph.D. in Applied Statistics from the Department of Decision Science, Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya. His doctoral research explored the intersection of youth’s school-to-work transition, measurements of skill mismatch, and income.
Professor Pun Ngai: Before joining Lingnan University as Chair Professor in 2021, Prof. PUN Ngai was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong.
Pun Ngai received her Ph.D. from the University of London, SOAS, in 1998. She won the 2006 C. Wright Mills Award for her first book, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (Duke University Press, 2005). Made in China is widely used as required reading in major universities in America, Europe, and Asia. Together with Dying for Apple: Foxconn and Chinese Workers (co-authored with Jenny Chan and Mark Selden, 2016), these two texts have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Chinese. She is the sole author of Migrant Labor in Post-Socialist China (Polity Press, 2016). She is also the editor of seven volumes of books in both English and Chinese. Two of her Chinese books were also awarded the Hong Kong Book Prize in 2007 and 2011 as the top ten popular books widely read in Hong Kong and Mainland China. She was a Top 2 Scientist in the World ranked by Stanford University.
Professor Shakuntala Banaji: Shakuntala Banaji, PhD, is Professor of Media, Culture and Social Change and Programme Director for the MSc in Media, Communication and Development in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Banaji's research addresses the intersection between socio-political contexts, media, identities and participation. Her focus is twofold: first on the lives of children and young people in different geographical and class contexts, with a critical take on the ways in which rhetorical conceptions of citizenship, development, engagement and digital media construct the notion of agency, and position child and youth subjectivities. And second, on the ways in which historical propaganda and current misinformation, disinformation and hate speech are reconfiguring the public spheres of India, the UK and other nations. She has been teaching for over 28 years, winning numerous awards including the fourth European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and the Diener Prize, awarded by Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Professor Banaji is the author, co-author or editor of 6 books and over 70 papers and monographs, including Children and Media in India (Routledge, 2017) and Youth Active Citizenship in Europe (Palgrave 2020). Social Media and Hate with Ram Bhat (2022) theorises the social and psychological repercussions of the landscape of disinformation and trolling in the U.K., India, Brazil and Myanmar with particular attention to the connections between contemporary and historical discrimination, marginalisation and violence. She is currently conducting research on young people around the world and their responses to climate change, precarity and social injustice for a book on young people and the future.
Chair:
Professor Bingchun Meng: Bingchun Meng is Professor in the Department for Media and Communications at LSE, where she also co-directs the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Research Centre. Professor Meng is currently the Director of LSE PhD Academy and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). Professor Meng’s research interests include gender and the media, political economy of media industries, communication governance, and comparative media studies.