Benjamin 

LOW

Benjamin Low is joining CALS under the HSS Seed Fund Grant as a Research Associate with his primary duties including assisting CALS Director, Associate Professor Jaclyn Neo, with the research design, coordination, and implementation of the LaPIDoR (Law and Policy Implications of the Digitalization of Religion) pilot project. His work with LaPIDoR involves conducting empirical research on the evolving relationship between the proliferation of digital technologies and religious community and practice with the goal of providing insights informed by the social sciences and humanities that contribute to clarifying and refining the regulation of religion in Singapore and beyond. During his time with CALS, he will be assisting Assoc Prof Neo and the LaPIDoR team with tasks including grant writing, events organisation, and the design and conduct of the research itself.

Currently, Benjamin is completing his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford Department of Sociology. A National Arts Council Arts Scholar and active jazz musician, he employs network analysis to explore innovation from a sociological standpoint. Inspired by his master’s thesis work in which he examined the social dynamics of intercultural learning in jazz music by focusing on processes through which knowledge and practice in jazz performance are diffused among students from different countries in peer-to-peer online learning environments, his doctoral research project deploys an inductive, multimethod approach to investigate the network bases of innovation by using the Singapore jazz musician community as a case study.

Cultural Production, Innovation, Symbolic Boundary-Work, Valuation