I am currently working at NUS Office of Student Affairs (OSA) where I manage community engagement and diversity and inclusion. Beyond that, I founded a working group to end female genital cutting (FGC) in Singapore called End FGC SG. We are a collective of Muslim and Muslim-raised women who are passionate about ending FGC within the next generation by (i) educating the Muslim community on the ethics, religious contexts and bodily autonomy issues surrounding FGC, (ii) engaging relevant religious and healthcare leaders to have a public stance on FGC, and (iii) educating the broader community and create solidarity and allyship, so as to inspire action from the larger Singapore population. My interest in FGC began during my second year when I found out the cut was done on me when I was two years old by a traditional midwife. Since then, I have written, analysed and processed this practice in many Anthropology classes, papers and even during my capstone. Anthropology has allowed me to make sense of the socio-political context of this practice in Singapore and kickstarted my advocacy against it.

I am currently a Teaching Assistant at the new interdisciplinary NUS college, the College of Humanities and Sciences, for a core Social Science course titled “Understanding Social Complexity”. The Anthropology major at Yale-NUS was an invaluable foundation for developing my pedagogical principles. The courses were thoughtfully and rigorously designed to push students to interrogate power dynamics, intersectionality, and unravel layers of social complexity. The professors also modelled skills to facilitate an inclusive and accessible learning environment, as well as encouraging students to think self-reflexively about their position in the classroom and beyond.

I stepped out of Yale-NUS knowing I wanted to do research in policy. Through the courses I took in Anthropology, as well as Urban Studies and Environmental Studies, I learned that policy has immense power over how people experience life. Majoring in Anthropology lay the groundwork to critically think about and challenge common beliefs and systems. It also equipped me with the skills in and an understanding of the importance of qualitative research, especially when tackling complex social issues.