Kelvin Choo Wei Cheng

Kelvin Choo Wei Cheng

England

My achievements in the educational and social sector mainly involve the advocation for a holistic understanding of diversity and inclusion. Throughout my university education, I have participated in various projects which have allowed me to challenge myself meta-cognitively to re-contextualise the intersectionalities that are implied in « culture », and the broader implications that it has in how globalisation manifests itself. I was once engaged in the International Office as a Go Global Ambassador, where I was entrusted with the task to organise events in a week-long campaign to promote cultural awareness amongst students. The bottleneck that I have identified in the discussions is two-folded, where one involves the failure to diverge from looking at culture from an ethnoreligious and linguistic lens, and the other involves the “exoticisation” of cultures considered as “foreign”. In the end, we managed to organise an open-mic event where we have emphasised the centrality of integrity and autonomy, by giving back control to individuals themselves to frame and share their worldview. A post-mortem of this event has inspired me to pursue the macro-question of how neo-colonialism persists through the monopoly of cultural narratives. I have then sought to internalise it in my academic endeavour, where I constantly seek to decolonise not just the system and curriculum but also the methodologies involving the studies of non-European traditions. With a specific interest in the ex-Soviet region and the exploitation of my Russian speaking skills, I have engaged in robust comparative studies where I scrutinise the narratives that I gather from the locals with that of the academic literature and Western media narrative. In the process, it has allowed me to develop an anti-colonial ethos which I permeate in international conferences where I sow the seeds of Third-World empowerment and acknowledgement.