Dr Ying Xin Show

Southeast Asian History and Literature (esp. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Chinese and Sinophone literature, Gender Studies, Chinese Diaspora, Print Culture, Translation, Memory

I am a Lecturer at the School of Culture, History and Language and Deputy Director of ANU Malaysia Institute, College of Asia and the Pacific. Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Center for Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan (2018-2019), visiting researcher at KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2018) and contract lecturer at the Chinese Department of University of Malaya (2017-2018). 

Outside academia, I worked as assistant editor at the online independent news portal Malaysiakini in Kuala Lumpur from 2015 to 2017. I co-founded Rumah Attap Library & Collective (2017-), an independent cultural studies library and community-building space in KL. I am also a translator working in Chinese/Mandarin, English and Malay. 

I have broad interests ranging from 20th-century Asian history, movements and literature to contemporary politics and society. I am particularly interested in exploring the history and culture of migration, decolonization and the impact of the Cold War on Asian societies through literature and arts. I co-edited (with Ngoi Guat Peng) Revisiting Malaya: Uncovering Historical and Political Thoughts in Nusantara (published by Gerakbudaya 2020). 

My main project deals with the cultural history of Sinophone/Chinese community in the making of Malaya, 1945-1969. It examines knowledge and literary productions and non-elite cultural networks to explore issues and debates such as localization, modernism, left-wing politics, gender and translation during the Malayan Emergency and in the geopolitical context of the global Cold War. I was awarded the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) for a three-year fellowship (2023-2026) to undertake this project. 

Other projects include contemporary migrant workers' literature from Southeast Asia, lives and literature of radical Malayan women, Chinese diaspora history, and memory of the Left in Singapore and Malaysia, among others. 

Apart from my research, I am also the translator of Singaporean writer Alfian Sa'at's short stories collection Malay Sketches into the Chinese language (Taipei: Brilliant Time, 2020 [Traditional Chinese]; Shanghai: 51 Personae, 2022 [Simplified Chinese]). The book won the Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao's 2020 Top Ten Annual Book Award. I also coordinated and copyedited the Chinese translation of Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas's classic The Myth of the Lazy Native (Taipei: NYCU Press, 2022). 

Most of my writings are available here. 

Beh, Zhaoyen (MA, Co-supervisor)- The Sedition Act 1948: The Making of Race, Religion and Royalty in Postcolonial Malaysia. National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. 2020.