About the Speaker

Dr. Hew Wai Weng is a research fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (IKMAS, UKM). His research interests include the intersections between ethnicity, religiosity, class and politics in Malaysia and Indonesia. He writes about Chinese Muslim identities, Hui migration, social media and Islamic preaching, and urban middle-class Muslim aspirations in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Specialising in geopolitics, security studies & political economy, Dr H.A. Hellyer has more than 20 years of experience in governmental, corporate advisory, and academic environments in the West, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. A scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (USA), he simultaneously serves as Senior Associate Fellow in International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security (UK). Designated as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce on tackling radicalisation, he was appointed as the first ESRC Fellow in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

He has held senior positions at international institutions including policy institutes such as Brookings (USA), the Atlantic Council (USA), and the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (Malaysia); and academic posts at Warwick University (UK), Harvard University (USA), Cambridge University (UK), the American University (Egypt), and the University of Technology (Malaysia).

Dr Hellyer also served as the first Arab world-based Senior Practice Consultant at the Gallup Organisation, where he analysed public opinion data worldwide. His insights on current events are regularly sought by the international media networks such as CNN and the BBC, with op-eds for publications like the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Guardian, Politico, the Financial Times, New Straits Times, and Daily News Egypt. His publications in his specialist subject areas include 7 books, more than 20 book chapters, journal articles and monographs to various academic presses.

About the Moderator

Yasmine Wong is Associate Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Yasmine’s research broadly focuses on social resilience, social cohesion, and inter-group relations in online and offline spaces. Her current research explores issues surrounding citizenship, race, sexuality, and identity in Singapore, as well as on gendered experiences in the online sphere. She is co-editor of Gender and Security in Digital Space: Navigating Access, Harassment, and Disinformation.