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Research Fellow. National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute (ARI), "Asian Urbanisms Cluster", since 17 May 2010.
Born into a twentieth century Munich, I always loved exploring faraway lands. My various homes included China where I lived for more than five years and completed a graduate programme at Johns Hopkins University's Nanjing Center during 2001-2002. Following a most generous offer to spend a few years in sunny California, I moved to the United States in fall 2003 to commence a Ph.D. programme at University of Southern California's (USC) Department of Geography. I found Los Angeles to be a fascinating place for anyone with an interest in the complex struggles within which diverse cultures and networks are produced. At USC, I studied under eminent geographers Michael Dear (who became my doctoral adviser) and Jennifer Wolch, communications scholar Manuel Castells, political scientist Stanley Rosen, and historian John Wills Jr., to name a few. Graduate school was bliss: Not only was I paid for reading books on the beach and jot down my thoughts, I also got to meet and learn from some of the most nimble and cultivated scholarly minds alive. Three years into the programme, having grown wary of the disastrous effects of disciplinary and other blinders on academic knowledge production, I decided to elope from the ivory towers and do some 'real' and 'meaningful' empirical research. I had set my mind on engaging issues around the burgeoning Internet culture and civil sphere in China, and left L.A. in October 2006 to spend the next 18 months conducting ethnographicish fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai. Slowly I zoomed in on the concrete and emplaced voices and aspirations that operate through, and in turn configure, the Chinese-language blogosphere. One result of this intellectual engagement was a Ph.D. dissertation with the wordy title As I investigated the effects of new media on individual and shared agency and social learning, I realized the extent to which the online and the offline have already become networked and interdependent dimensions of socio-cultural and political consciousness and activity. I hence knew that I would make ‘cyburbanity’ the focus of my professional life. In November 2008, freshly graduated, I jumped on a plane to Singapore to take up a Postdoc position in the "Open Cluster" at ARI, a university-level research institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS). One and a half years later, I have been 'upgraded' to Research Fellow, and am now a member of ARI's "Asian Urbanisms Cluster". A perfect anchor for research and travel explorations of Asia as well as an enchanting city in its own right, Singapore might well be home for quite some time to come.
My research interests include urban cultural-social-political geographies, and studies pertaining to activism, the Internet, and Asia. In particular, I strive to understand the relationship between our virtual and physical worlds and related multidirectional processes of social learning and development. Such processes include issues around consciousness, thinking and expression, the intentional and contested production of shared meanings, and the ways in which such mental or vocal aspirations and actions stimulate visible (measurable) societal change. In a nutshell, I am fascinated by ongoing creative imaginings of what 'political action' means in our Information Age and how people continue to create and re-create meaningful spaces, institutions and social movements in their quest to make the world a better place.
At ARI, I have put together a co-edited volume on the Chinese Internet. I am also working on journal articles and on revising my thesis into a publishable (and readable) monograph. In addition to these writing projects, I am developing a collaborative research project titled Asia's Civil Spheres: New Media, Urban Public Space, Social Movements. I have created a website dedicated to it. I have organized an international workshop titled Asia's Civil Spheres: New Media, Urban Public Space, Social Movements, which was held here in Singapore in September 2011. Please check the ARI Website for details on Programme and Abstracts. Co-organizer Rita Padawangi from NUS's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and I have gathered together scholars who do interesting work on the nexus of issues suggested by the title. We conceive new media as not simply an add-on to existing theories but as grounded in social and cultural geographies informed by human experiences and activities in concrete urban places and situations. As we witness an increasing intertwining between the virtual and the built environment in everyday life across cities in Asia, with dramatic yet under researched effects on social action and power relations, it is timely to ask how the inseparableness of the virtual and the physical influences urban cultural politics and place-making processes in and of Asia. The workshop and my research activities at the frontiers of new media-augmented urbanity are good indications of my intentions and future directions for research and publication. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like further information or are interested in collaborating!
Journal papers : academic Marolt, P. (with Michael J. Dear, et al.), 2008. Critical Responses to the Los Angeles School of Urbanism. Urban Geography 29 (2), pp. 101-112 Books : edited Marolt, P. (co-edited with David K. Herold): Online Society in China: Creating, celebrating, and instrumentalizing the online carnival. (Routledge 2011). Books : sections Marolt, P.: Grassroots agency in a civil sphere? Re-thinking Internet Control in China. In: Herold, D. K. and Marolt, P.: Online Society in China: Creating, celebrating, and instrumentalizing the online carnival. (Routledge 2011). Books : reviews (selected) International Journal of Communication[PDF] 2010 (4), pp. 804-807 Marolt, P.: Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online [book review].
Books : authored [in preparation] Cyber China: bloggers making space for action [working title] Books : edited [in preparation] Tba. Journal papers : academic Tba.
Media & The City (ECREA), Milan, February 2012. Tba. Internet Politics Policy (IPP), Oxford, September 2010. "Blogging in China: Cyber-Urban Institutions and Political Change" Global Urban Frontiers, Singapore, September 2010. "Environmental Activists and the Curious Rise of Cyber-Urban Institutions in Beijing: conceptual premonitions" 6th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC), Hong Kong, June 2008. "Crossing the River by Groping for Stones: from free expression to shared meanings to collective political action in China’s blogosphere" 3rd Chinese Blogger Conference (CnBloggerCon), Beijing, November 2007. "Xifang xuezhe yan zhong de Zhongguo bokejie ji tamen weishenme cuo le" (China’s Blogosphere in the Eyes of Western Research, and Why They are Wrong) 4th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC), Singapore, July 2006. "Thriving Cultural Production: Identity Formation in a Chinese Online Community" Association of American Geographers (AAG), Chicago, March 2006. "Virtual Communities and Identity Formation in China"
Funding for Conference Modes of Activism and Engagement in the Chinese Public Sphere, April 2012. Funding for Workshop Asia's Civil Spheres, September 2011. NUS Academic Field Research Grant, June-July 2010. ARI (NUS). Research Fellowship, May 2010-present. ARI (NUS). One-Year Postdoctoral Fellowship, November 2009-2010. ARI (NUS). One-Year Postdoctoral Fellowship, November 2008-2009. USC College. Final Summer Dissertation Fellowship (US$5,000), 2008. U.S.-China Institute @ USC. Summer Fieldwork Grant (US$3,833), 2007. USC Geography. Auxiliary Grant for Dissertation Research in China (US$2,000), 2006-2007. USC College. Advanced Year Fellowship, 2006-2007. USC College. Academic Year Teaching Assistantship, 2005-2006. USC College. Urban & Global Summer Fellowship (US$5,000), 2005. USC College. Urban & Global Research Fellowship, 2004-2005. USC College. Strategic Theme Summer Supplement (US$2,000), 2004. USC College. Urban & Global Thematic First Year Fellowship, 2003-2004.
First Prize in Student Paper Competition, Chinese Internet Research Conference, 2006. Third Prize in Bilingual Essay Competition, Johns-Hopkins University, Nanjing Center, 2002.
Journal Referee Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, since 2009. Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, since 2007. The Information Society, since 2011. Committee Memberships at ARI Newsletter and Outreach Committee, since 2009. Chair since Aug 2010. Working Paper Series Editorial Committee, since 2009. Steering Committee, Oct 2009 - Oct 2010. Asian Graduate Fellows and Forum Committee, Dec 2008 - Aug 2010.
Association for Asian Studies (AAS), since 2005. Association of American Geographers (AAG), 2004-2008. Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, visiting scholar, 2006-2007.
Please contact me for further information. |
My favourite pastime activities include exploratory trips into the world outside my little writer’s retreat (my office), reading and writing nonacademic things, and daydreaming about present, past, and future.
I particularly enjoy nature walks with my wife Sophia, and observing the monkeys and monitor lizards while the shafts of sunlight pass through the layers of primary rainforest in Singapore's 
