CV: Liberty Chee
Education
PhD Political Science, National University of Singapore (Singapore), Aug 2010 – Oct 2015
Research Scholar, Ministry of Education, Singapore
MA Global Governance and Regional Politics, Bond University (Australia), Jan 2007 – May 2008
Scholar, Australian Leadership Awards, AusAid
BA European Languages (major French, minor Political Science), University of the Philippines (Philippines). Jun 1997 - Nov 2001
Academic Positions
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow. Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage. Ca' Foscari University Venice (Italy), October 2022 - September 2024
Lecturer / Docent. Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), September 2021 - August 2022 and April 2020 to July 2020
Lecturer / Docent. Department of International Relations and International Organization, University of Groningen (Netherlands), September 2020 – August 2021
Postdoctoral Researcher. Political Science / Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research. University of Amsterdam, (Netherlands). May 2018 to July 2019
Postdoctoral Fellow. Identities Cluster, Asia Research Institute. National University of Singapore, (Singapore), September 2017 to April 2018
Assistant Professor. Department of Political Science. Ateneo de Manila University, (Philippines), August 2016 to May 2017
Teaching Assistant. Global Studies Programme. Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, (Singapore), August 2015 to December 2015
PhD Researcher. Department of Political Science. National University of Singapore, (Singapore), August 2010 to October 2015
Instructor (part-time). Department of Political Science. Ateneo de Manila University, (Philippines), November 2008 to March 2009
Instructor (part-time). College of International Relations. Lyceum of the Philippines University, (Philippines), June 2006 to October 2006
Instructor (part-time). Department of Political Science. De la Salle University, (Philippines), April 2005 to August 2005
Instructor (part-time). Modern Languages Department. Ateneo de Manila University, (Philippines), June 2008 to May 2010 and November 2002 to October 2005
Research
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow. Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage. Ca' Foscari University Venice (Italy), October 2022 - September 2024
Project #KnowingDOM: Law, Economy and Seeing Woman’s Work: Knowledge Production and the ILO’s Domestic Workers Convention in Global Migration Governance
Project website here: https://www.unive.it/knowingdom/
Latest news here: https://www.libertychee.nl/knowingdom/updates
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Amsterdam / Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, May 2018 – July 2019
RIGHTS project (How major migrant-sending countries advocate for the rights of their workers overseas).
Primary qualitative data co-generation - fieldwork and interviewing in Manila (Philippines), Marrakesh (Morocco) and Geneva (Switzerland)
Managed logistics and budget reporting for fieldwork
Brokered access for the research team to the Global Forum on Migration and Development (Marrakesh, December 2018
Network-building, initiation of contacts.
Transcription of about 30 interviews (mostly in English, some in Filipino)
Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, September 2017 to April 2018
Coordinated the Identities Research Cluster members (cross-faculty, cross-universities) for ‘Making Identity Count in Asia’ (3-year project funded by the Singapore Social Science Research Council)
Set up and coordinated the cluster's reading group
Trained two social media coders for the Singapore identity report
Coded and wrote the Philippines identity reports (2010, 2015)
Contributed to the planning of one of the cluster’s major events (Does “Invisible Privilege” Travel?: Looking Beyond the Geographies of White Privilege), input in conference funding proposal, and coordination between the ARI conference team and the organizers.
PhD Researcher, Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, August 2010 – October 2015
Research on the role of the migration industry in global migration governance
Eight-month multi-sited ethnography in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore
Dissertation: Power as Practice in Global Governance: Recruitment Agencies and Domestic Worker Migration in Southeast Asia.
Graduate Student Representative (Political Science)
Coordinated the Reading Group of the Migration Cluster (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences)
Co-organized graduate student event (Migration Cluster): Brownbag Seminar on Doing Fieldwork
Co-organized the graduate student workshop (NUS and University of British Columbia). ‘Asia Pacific Worlds in Motion IV: Fixities and Fluidities.’
Conferences, Invited talks and Workshops
July 8-10, 2024 (Participant). "Hard Numbers and 'Velvet Triangles': Mobilising Statistics for the ILO Convention on Domestic Work". European Conference on Politics and Gender, Ghent University.
June 5-7, 2024. (Participant). "Hard Numbers and 'Velvet Triangles': Mobilising Statistics for the ILO Convention on Domestic Work". Global Transformations and Governance Challenges Conference, Leiden University.
March 14-15, 2024. (Participant). "New complexities and geographies in migration and diversity governance". IMISCOE Migration Governance Section Committee. University of Amsterdam.
February 22, 2024. (Speaker). "Merchants of migrant domestic labour: Recruitment agencies and neoliberal migration governance in Southeast Asia". Lunch Lecture, International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden.
September 5-9, 2023. (Presenter). European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference on International Relations. Papers: “The Problem of Domestic Work at the ILO” and “Training, Packaging and Commodification: the Work of ‘Maid’ Training Centres in Southeast Asia”. University of Potsdam, Germany
July 3-6, 2023. (Panel Organizer and Presenter). IMISCOE Conference. Panel: ‘Essential but excluded: Surviving precarity in essential economic sectors during and after the pandemic.’
June 13-14, 2023. (Presenter). Swiss Network of International Studies Biennial Conference: International Organizations in Crisis. Paper: The Problem of Domestic Work at the ILO. University of St. Gallen.
May 22, 2023. (Speaker). Global Governance Talk. "Seeing Women's Labour: The Problem of Domestic Work at the ILO". Geneva Graduate Institute.
July 8, 2022. (Participant). Debt, Game and Death: Squid Game in World Politics. European Workshops in International Studies 2022. Thessaloniki, Greece. Paper presented: 'Play and Counter-conduct: Migrant Domestic Workers on TikTok.'
April 7, 2022. (Presenter). Politics and Poetics of Strike in the Postsocialist and Postcolonial Encounter. Paper presented: 'Play and Counter-conduct: Migrant Domestic Workers on TikTok.'
March 3, 2021. (Presenter). Chair Group International Relations & Security Studies Colloquium. Paper presented: 'A Return to the World': Diffraction and Truth-telling in Post-Cartesian IR’
November 1, 2021. (Guest Lecture). "The Middlemen of Migration." 'Nation and Migration course, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, VU Amsterdam.
September 14, 2021. (Speaker). Plenary on Migration. European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference.
September 10, 2020. (Speaker). Roundtable Discussion: Knowledge Practices and Academic Community: Keeping the Fire Going in the Times of Corona. EISA Virtual Conference.
June 20-22, 2019. (Panel organizer and participant). Global Labour Migration: Past and Present. International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Panel: An Appraisal of the Migration Industry
January 10-11, 2019. (Participant). Making Identity Count in Asia. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Paper presented: Philippine Identity Reports 2010 and 2015.
November 1-2, 2018. (Participant). Mapping and Theorizing Migration Governance and Diplomacy: Insights from the South-to-West Asian Migration Corridor. Leiden University. Paper presented: ‘Supermaids’: Hyper-Resilient Subjects in Private Spaces of Insecurity.
September 11, 2018. (Participant). Early Career Workshop: On the Importance of Failure: Living and Knowing in the Field. 12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations. Prague, Czech Republic. Paper Presented: “Being Feeble: On the Portrayal of Competence and Control in the Recounting of Fieldwork.”
September 10, 2018. (Participant). Early Career Workshop, Part 2. World International Studies Committee and Avec et Pour Autres Foundation. University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic. Paper Presented: “Supermaids: Hyper-resilient subjects in Private Spaces of Insecurity.”
December 5-7, 2017). (Participant). Early Career Workshop. Theme: World Order and Peace. International Politics in the 21st Century in a Global Perspective. World International Studies Committee and Avec et Pour Autres Foundation. Goa University, Goa, India.
August 6-9, 2014. (Presenter). 4th Global International Studies Conference. Organised by the World International Studies Committee. Goethe University, Frankfurt. Paper Presented: “Recruitment agency as security dispositif: the government of domestic worker migration in Southeast Asia.”
June 16-18, 2011. (Presenter). Decolonising the Social Sciences and Humanities. Organised by the Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies. Goethe University, Frankfurt. Paper presented: “The Regulation of Globalising Reproductive Labour Markets.”
November 25-26, 2010. (Presenter). Migrations, Mobility and Globalisation. Consortium for Asian and African Studies. INALCO, Paris. Paper presented: “Theorizing the Labour-Exporting State: a View From Political Economy.”
Publications
Journal articles
Play and Counter-Conduct: Migrant Domestic Workers on TikTok. (2023) Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, 37(4), pp. 493-617.
Being of Use: Diffraction and an Ethics of Truth-Telling in Post-Cartesian IR. (2022) Global Studies Quarterly 2022, 2(3), pp 1-10.
Supermaids: Hyper-resilient subjects in neoliberal migration governance. (2020) International Political Sociology 14(4), pp. 336-381.
Book reviews
The Political Economy of Violence Against Women. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2014 68(3), p. 379.
The Cultural Revolution at the Margins by Yiching Wu. Asian Journal of Social Science, 2018 46(6), pp. 785-786.
Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labour to the World. POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science, 2010, 16 (1), pp. 71-73
Power as Practice in Global Governance: Recruitment Agencies and Domestic Worker Migration in Southeast Asia. 2015, National University of Singapore.
Popular Press
December 2021. “ASEAN on Migrant Rights: Making Process, Not Progress.” 9Dashline.
November 2020. “Filipino Envoy Puts the Philippines’ Third Foreign Policy Pillar on the Line.” The Diplomat.
Awards
2022. Recipient of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. Two-year research project #KnowingDOM fully funded by the European Commission, MSCA Horizon Europe Programme.
2010. Recipient of a Research Scholarship. National University of Singapore (Ministry of Education, Government of Singapore). A fully-funded scholarship to undertake a PhD in Singapore.
2007. Recipient of Australian Leadership Awards, AusAid (Government of Australia). A fully-funded scholarship to undertake a master’s degree in Australia.