Germany
researcher-practitioner working at the interface of anthropology, geography, humanistic and critical community psychology, and food - focusing on building collectivity and resilience within dispersed horizontal networks. continually refining: (agroecological) futurity and imagination, knowledge co-production shaping/shaped pedagogy for collaborative spaces with: (counter)urban design--Foodscape Collective (2015-2020); Tanah (2016-2020); the people and space of soft/WALL/studs (2017-2021); Plurality University Network (2017-2020); The Soil Regeneration Project and Living Soil Asia team (2019-present)! the graduate community of the Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich (2021-present). research and teaching: >> formerly Project Secretariat of the Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network (SEANNET, https://blog.ukna.asia/), a 5+5-year project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, based at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden. >> research assistant on the Urban Aspirations project, Department of Geography (NUS) >> teaching associate for an urban studies introductory course at the Singapore University of Social Sciences >> co-developed and taught a course with Environing Infrastructures project team, Spring 2021, for the Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich >> developed, taught, and co-led a new course with 6 community course partners for the Singapore University of Social Sciences (July 2022). The course has since been expanded and included in the university's core curriculum. More information can be found here: https://www.suss.edu.sg/courses/detail/fss223 earlier working-thoughts-on-agroecology: https://hynng.substack.com academic profile (for PDFs and articles): https://lmu-munich.academia.edu/HuiyingNg
I co-lead a work package within the FORbEST project with fellow portal-journeyer Anna Krzywoszynska, which means I get to see the FORbEST Living Labs from seed to growth! Coordinating, translating, and spider-webbing, making the hard soft, and the soft be seen. Transdisciplinary, action-oriented, and iterative with the Consortium's members.
Breaking down silos in the urban food political economy, to regenerate social trust between communities, governments, and businesses. By regenerating the physical condition of urban soil, we are also restoring value to our imaginaries of the non-urban. The soil regeneration project is a project to seed new social-soil communities in urban centres. Soil is much more social than we think: the similarities between the microscopic community of soil offers a mirror to reflect on the inter-relations we have in our own human social communities. At the same time, the potential of soil to capture and store carbon in the ground deserves and demands urgent, immediate attention and knowledge formation from citizens globally. Place-based, #community-supported food systems will feed an equitable future. From 2020-2022, the Soil Regeneration Project will combine lab-based and citizen science research to track 13 edible growing spaces at the forefront of city-wide regenerative soil practices to sequester carbon, grow #nutrient-dense food, and grow a movement for #low-input and resilient food systems.
From 2020-2024, I join the Freigeist Fellowship project at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, "Environing Infrastructure" as a doctoral candidate, looking at the environmental aspects of infrastructural Belt and Road Initiative investments in Southeast Asia. This work will continue to weave together my interests around soil, land use and land use change, and agroecology (via agroforestry, soil regeneration, and the conditions for cultural regeneration).
I was a research assistant for, and managed the online content of the Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network (SEANNET) project (2017-2020), where 6 teams in 6 cities in Southeast Asia undertake pedagogy and research around issues in their city using the neighborhood as a unit of analysis. Our teams' disciplines range across architecture, geography, sociology, anthropology, art and museum studies, and more. The project is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, and supports the pedagogical development of local Principal Investigators and their teams, with collaboration with their international Principal Investigators, and regional teams. It is based out of the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University. Find out more on our SEANNET research blog - where we post research updates and activities.
I worked with the VSStory team (awesome coworkers!) to create video narrative, and with clients including impact investors in Asia to write web resources and articles that paired with video. We covered topics including gender, seaweed, and education during my time there. Also: verrry early stage research tools for this B Corp company’s future work with partners :)