CARe Researchers
The Centre consist of researchers from different backgrounds contributing to the research clusters and other related areas.
Dr Siti Mazidah Haji Mohamad
Director
Email: mazidah.mohamad@ubd.edu.bn
Dr Siti Mazidah Haji Mohamad is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) and Director of the Centre for Advanced Research (CARe) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She is a geographer researching Muslim youth culture and engagements with popular culture and new media in Southeast Asia focusing on mobilities, everyday socio-spatial affective engagements, practices, and realities of young people reflected through various new social media platforms. Her main research interest lies at the intersection of young people, digital media and popular culture, and everyday lived religion studies. Within this research area, she has studied: mediated Muslim cosmopolitanism; Bruneian youth self-disclosure on social media in the context of online privacy; influencers’ culture in the context of digital work and mobilities; micro-celebrities’ influence on Muslim women’s hijab consumption; Muslim performance of religiosity on social media; and Brunei’s young Muslims ‘Generation M’ expression of identity on Instagram and YouTube. She has published in Celebrity Studies (2019), Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (2020) and Popular Communication (2021). Currently, she is leading research on TikTok Cultures in Brunei Darussalam and is involved with several other research projects with Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS), ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
Dr Ly Slesman @Sulaiman
Senior Assistant Professor / Researcher
Email: Slesman.ly@ubd.edu.bn
Dr Ly Slesman @ Sulaiman Bin Mohd Aliis a senior assistant professor and social statistician at the Centre for Advanced Research (CARe), Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei. Prior to joining CARe in 2017, he was a senior lecturer at the School of Business and Economics, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), where he supervised postgraduate and undergraduate students and taught econometrics and economics courses for postgraduate and undergraduate programs. He was also a researcher at the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Dr Sulaiman obtained his Ph.D. in Economics (with Distinction) from UPM, and master’s in economics (with Distinction) from the International Islamic University Malaysia, Malaysia. His research interests cover the political economy of socio-economic development processes and outcomes involving public and private foreign capital flows, entrepreneurship, financial development, natural resources and welfare, and applied socioeconomics. His research works appear in reputable international referred journals such as Resources Policy, International Business Review, Economic Modelling, Economic Systems, Journal of International Development, International Journal of Finance and Economics, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Asian Development Review, Singapore Economic Review, Southeast Asian Affairs, among others.
Dr Evi Nurvidya Ariffin
Senior Assistant Professor / Researcher
Email: evi.arifin@ubd.edu.bn
Evi Nurvidya Arifin is a Senior Assistant Professor at the Centre for Advanced Research (CARe), Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). She is a social statistician-demographer with a diverse range of research interests that span multiple disciplines. Her areas of expertise encompass ageing population, internal and international migration, poverty, retirement, disability, ethnicity, religion, electoral behaviour, fertility and reproductive health. Following the completion of her PhD in Social Statistics from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom, in 2001, she resided in Singapore until 2014. During her time in Singapore, she served as a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, which is now known as the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Earlier, she embarked on a postdoctoral fellowship at the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis and the Asia Research Institute, both at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. Before joining CARe, she dedicated her time to her home country, Indonesia, from 2015 to 2019 as a faculty member at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia, a research coordinator at the Centre for Family and Ageing Studies (CeFAS) and teaching at the Post-graduate program of Public Health at the Universitas Respati Indonesia, where her outstanding teaching abilities were recognized with the Best Lecturer Award in 2018.
Dr Valatheeswaran Chinnakkannu
Lecturer / Researcher
Email: valathee.chinnakkannu@ubd.edu.bn
Dr Valatheeswaran is a Lecturer in Labour Economics at the Centre for Advanced Research (CARe), Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institutes (MUSSI) in Ireland, where he was involved in the PANIWATER research project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. He completed his PhD in Economics at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala, affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where he researched the impact of international migration on human capital investments in India. His research interests include labour market, international migration, remittances, refugee studies, human capital, socioeconomic research, public policy and impact evaluation. He has published on these topics in several scholarly journals, including the Migration Letters, International Migration, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Indian Journal of Labour Economics and Margin: the Applied Economic Research. He has visited several countries to present his research papers at various international conferences and has worked as a consultant with international organizations.