Marcus Yee

Marcus Yee's picture
Bio: 
I am a PhD student researching environmental history and the history of Southeast Asia, as well as a 2022-2023 Whitney Humanities Center Fellow in the Environmental Humanities. My doctoral research proposes to look at the history of heat against the legacies of imperialism, international and national developmentalist agendas, and urban environmental injustice across cities within the South China Sea littoral. I understand heat as a multivalent historical phenomenon that involves the histories of climatology, cities, technology, environmental health, and the senses. Ultimately, I work towards crafting parables that register the ongoing climate crisis as a crisis of inequality. 
 
I earned a BA from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), double majoring in History and Earth Systems Science, with a minor in Thai. I completed two final-year historical research projects: a project on the 1986 anti-Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant protests, and a dissertation on air-conditioning and thermohistory in Hong Kong. At HKU, I received the Centenary Prize in History, the Wang Gungwu Prize for Undergraduate Students in History, and the Huey Suen Fat Prize in History. I was born and raised in Singapore, and was previously an art writer and art worker.