CV: Liberty Chee

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.’

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.”