Kuansong “Victor” Zhuang
I started out on my journey, really as a result of meeting Uncle Ron. Ron Chandran-Dudley was elected as the first chairperson of Disabled Peoples’ International, when it was founded in Singapore in 1981, by fellow activists such as Ed Roberts and Vic Finkelstein. Uncle Ron was family to me, and in many ways, the stories that he used to tell me, of the struggles both in Singapore and internationally has continued to motivate me. His passing in 2015 was a huge loss to me, and reminded me of the work that laid ahead for us in Singapore. As we pursue inclusion in Singapore, we need to always remember that claiming to include others is not enough, rather true inclusion happens only when those who are to be included are themselves involved in the process of doing so.
Why did you choose DHD at UIC?
I have had graduate experiences in Singapore and the UK, and coming to the USA was a natural progression. Being able to learn from the best in American disability studies, and to marry this knowledge with that from British disability studies was a major contributing factor!
What do you want to do with a DHD degree?
I hope to contribute to current debates of inclusion in Singapore and globally!
Research Interests
My research interests fall generally in these fields: the history of ideas, the intersection of technology and the body, postcolonial studies and cultural studies. I am interested in how inclusion happens in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and the effects on the disabled body when inclusion is led by a bureaucratic state concerned and governed by rationality, efficiency and productivity. I am also interested in examining how ideas such as the social model are localised and/or contested in this current climate of inclusion and also how discourses of inclusion and disability are manifested in cultural texts about inclusion.
Selected Presentations
2021 “See the True (Disabled) Me: Unexceptional Capacity and the Included”. Paper presented at the IAMCR 2021 Annual Conference, 11-15 July 2021, organized by the International Association for Media and Communication Research.
2021 “The Included: Thinking with Disability Studies in Singapore”. Talk at the Academia SG Singapore Studies Junior Scholar Seminars, 10 April 2021. https://www.academia.sg/seminar-series-2021/zhuang-disability/
2019 “The Banality of Unexceptionality: Capacity, Disability and the Biopolitics of Inclusion in Singapore”. International Keynote Speech at Disability Sociologies, Sociologies of Disability @Western Sydney University Pushing Boundaries in a Precarious World, 25 November 2019, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
Selected Publications
2021 Goggin, Gerard and Kuansong Victor, Zhuang. “Disability as Smart Equality: Inclusive Technology in a Digitally Advanced Nation”. In Digital Inclusion: Enhancing Vulnerable People’s Social Inclusion and Welfare?, edited by Panayiota Tsatsou. London: Palgrave.
2020 “At the Margins of Society: Disability Rights and Inclusion in 1980s Singapore”. Disability and the Global South, 7(1): 1813-1829. https://disabilityglobalsouth.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/07_01_02.pdf
2016 “Inclusion in Singapore – A Social Model Analysis to Disability Policy”. Disability and Society, 31(5): 622-640. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2016.1197821
Awards and Honors
2019 Macquarie University Cotutelle Scholarship (AUD 160,000)
2017 Tan Ean Kiam Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, awarded by the Tan Kah Kee Foundation (SGD 10,000)
2013 Chevening Scholarship, awarded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to pursue a MA in Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (GBP 12,500)
Education
MA in Disability Studies, University of Leeds, 2014; MA in History, National University of Singapore, 2010; BA (Hons) in History, National University of Singapore, 2008