Clarissa Ai Ling Lee

Clarissa Ai Ling Lee is currently a research fellow at the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development at Sunway University in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and a lecturer at UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She received her PhD in 2014 from the Program in Literature at Duke University, an MA in English from the University of Malaya in 2006 and a BSc in physics from the University of Malaya in 2002. Previous to working in academia, she has worked in publishing, as a copywriter and non-academic researcher at think tanks and a market consultancy. Her involvement in academia stems from a passion in the intellectual development of the communities she belongs to, both in Malaysia and elsewhere.

Current Work:

Clarissa Ai Ling Lee is currently running two research projects; one in big data and climate change, and the other on nuclear science and technology in the framework of sustainable development. Her choice for the projects stem from her passion in understanding how even the most mundane application of science and technology within the quotidian could also provide the germinating point for igniting creative and unprecedented insights and solutions towards dealing with major social and economic issues. She is particularly interested in understanding how curiosity driven intellectual inquiry can work hand-in-glove with applied and operations based research in a condition of limited resources and limited support to do what others might not think is practicable for communities seemingly still struggling with bread-and-butter issues.

Research Area Keyword(s):

Science, technology and innovation studies, sustainable development, history of science and technology, critical theories, role of humanities in developmental studies