Kenneth Dean

Prof Kenneth Dean is a Professor at the Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS), and the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor in the Humanities Division at Yale-NUS College. He has served as Cluster Leader of the Religion and Globalisation Cluster at the Asia Research Institute (NUS) since January 2015, with an 8-year joint appointment across the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster, the Religion and Globalisation Cluster, and the NUS Department of Chinese Studies.

• PhD in Chinese, Stanford University
• MA in Chinese, Stanford University

His research focuses on Chinese epigraphy, religious globalization, ritual studies, and the development of interactive multimedia databases. He has published extensively on Fujian’s religious history, cross-Asian secularism, and ritual alliances in Southeast Asia, while also directing documentary films like Bored in Heaven that explore cultural practices in China’s Putian region.

His current projects include the Singapore Historical GIS (SHGIS) and Singapore Biographical Database (SBDB), both accessible online. These databases integrate historical data with cultural and religious trends in Asia.

He is based at the NUS Asia Research Institute (AS8, #07-08) and can be contacted via aridek@nus.edu.sg.