Stanley Chia

Bio

Stanley Chia is a first-year MA student in in UBC’s Department of History. His current work focuses on modern Southeast Asian history, particularly how European colonialism and fluid Chinese identities can be linked with nation-building in Malaysia and Indonesia during the 1950s and 1960s. He has some experience working with Chinese and Malay texts, having learnt both languages during the formative years of his life.

Besides working as a TA for HIST103, Stanley is as a graduate research assistant at Centre for Southeast Asian Research (CSEAR) at the Institute of Asian Research. At CSEAR, he works on a series of projects, the most recent one being a study of local elections in Malaysia.

While an undergraduate student, Stanley double majored in History and International Relations, and minored in Contemporary Asian Studies. Thus, he has worked on case studies of comparative British, Dutch, French and Japanese colonialisms in modern Northeast and Southeast Asia. He remains interested on themes such as exile, indigeneity, colonial space, coups, revolutions and decolonization. He has also written some class papers on issues of sovereignty in early 20^th century China, US foreign policy, Canadian defence policy and Malaysian education policy.

During Stanley’s free time, he enjoys watching movies, playing music, taking photos and making origami.