Swee Lin Ho

Assoc Professor Swee Lin Ho is a distinguished sociologist and anthropologist at the National University of Singapore's Department of Sociology within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Joining NUS in 2012 after four years as a Korea Foundation Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at Catholic University of Korea, she maintains active research and teaching roles with office AS1 04-29 at 11 Arts Link, Singapore.

Her academic journey began with undergraduate studies in Philosophy at NUS, followed by extensive professional experience as auditor, financial journalist, and Vice President in business development across China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the UK. She later earned an M.A. in Comparative Culture (Sociology) from Sophia University (Tokyo), followed by M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at University of Oxford.

Professor Ho's research focuses on neoliberal transformations of urban economic life across East Asia, examining how flexible labor patterns reshape self-identity, gender dynamics, money management, and urban space. Her work spans ethnographic studies on Japanese love hotels, extramarital experiences, women's drinking practices, and K-pop idolization, extending to current investigations of global classical music and food industries. She analyzes how 'creativity' and 'passion' co-option in creative sectors impacts economic security, having conducted fieldwork with violin-makers in Italy and Asian musicians in Europe.

Her publications reveal consistent engagement with gender precarity in Japanese corporate culture, workplace harassment legislation, and pandemic-era consumption shifts. Key thematic clusters include gendered labor markets, urban spatial transformations, and cultural globalization's impact on intimate relationships.

• 2020 Book Grant by AmorePacific Foundation for Pride and Ambivalence: The Ascent of East Asia in Western Classical Music

Professor Ho mentors students through ethnographic field research methods while examining emergent corporate cultures and global Asian popular culture flows. Her multilingual capabilities (English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, French, Italian, Spanish) enable deep cross-cultural analysis of financialization patterns and intimacy commercialization across Asia.