Michael Barr

Biography

Michael Barr is Associate Professor of International Relations (Academic Status) at Flinders University. He is an internationally recognised authority on the history, politics and society of modern Singapore, which is the main subject of his scholarly output of five monographs, two edited books, and over 30 book chapters and refereed journal articles. In a series of seminal studies conducted over 30 years, Barr has interrogated Singapore’s governance, politics and history – extending to include economic, education, health, and social systems – through the prisms of colonial and pre-colonial history, post-colonial nation building, Chinese ethno-nationalism, elitism, technocracy, state power and state capitalism. He also has an extensive research record on the relationship between religion and politics in Asia, with articles and book chapters on the Catholic Church in Singapore, Confucianism in East and Southeast Asia and Islam in Malaysia and Singapore. Barr’s monographs are: Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs behind the Man (2000, 2009); Cultural Politics and Asian Values: The Tepid War (2002, 2004); Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project (2008, written with Zlatko Skrbis; Arabic translation published in 2012); The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence (2014), and Singapore: A Modern History (2019). From 2012-17 he was Editor-in-Chief of Asian Studies Review, flagship journal of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, after which he served as Associate Editor and the Deputy Editor until 2023. In 2024 he became Head of the Asian Studies Section of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.