Doctor Shashi Jayakumar
Nationality: Singapore
Year: 1999
Subject Area: Arts and Humanities
The funding from the Wingate Foundation enabled to me to continue with my research on the political history of England in the tenth century - specifically the reign of King Edgar (959-975). It eventually resulted in the successful defence of my doctoral dissertation in 2001. As tempting as it was to remain in academia, I decided in late 2001 to return to my country, Singapore. I then interviewed for a series of civil service jobs (having a degree in medieval history means that one has to do some fast talking in the interviews). I have thus been a member of the Singapore Administrative Service since 2002. This has in practice meant a variety of positions at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, as well as at the Ministry of Defence. I do sometimes regret leaving history behind but have increasingly come to realise that my study of medieval bureaucracies holds important lessons for my current work in rather more modern ones....