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Faculty Profile

Highlights
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Emily Soon is an award-winning scholar and educator whose research bridges early modern English literature, Southeast Asian studies, and global cultural exchanges, with a strong record of teaching excellence and public engagement.

Recognized for advancing scholarship on Southeast Asia’s place in early modern English literature and fostering cultural inclusivity in literary studies; combines archival research, digital humanities, and innovative pedagogy; recipient of multiple teaching excellence awards and research fellowships.

Focused research areas include Transcultural encounters in early modern English literature, especially representations of Southeast Asia and the East Indies; intersections of literature, trade, and religion; global Shakespeare; cultural inclusivity in literary education; digital and public humanities.
Areas of Expertise
MediaCulture and SocietyEnglish LiteratureReligious StudiesSoutheast Asian Studies

Emily Soon joined SMU in 2020. Her research focuses on cross-cultural literary exchange between Asia and Europe in the premodern and modern eras. She received her PhD in English from King’s College London in 2019, having completed her MPhil in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge and her BA (First Class Honours) in English and Related Literature at the University of York. Prior to joining SMU, she served as a Research Fellow at the National Museum of Singapore, where she studied Shakespeare’s place in Singapore’s cultural and educational history. Before that, she worked as a Curriculum Planning Officer in the Ministry of Education’s English Language and Literature Branch and taught Language Arts and Literature in an integrated programme school. Her research has been published in Modern Philology, Shakespeare Survey and England’s Asian Renaissance.

Qualifications

  • PhD, King’s College London, 2019
  • MPhil, University of Cambridge, 2012
  • BA, University of York, 2006

Research Interests

  • Literary and Cultural History of Singapore
  • Early Modern Literature
  • World Literature

Course(s) Taught in SMU

  • Big Questions
  • Asia and World Literature: Beyond Orientalism
  • Imagining the Self: Literature, Ethnicity and Gender in Asia