Rate My Professor Stephen Dobbs

Stephen Dobbs is an Associate Professor in Asian Studies within the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia, where he also serves as Offshore Coordinator. He holds a PhD awarded in 2000 and a BA in Asian Studies from Murdoch University. Since the early 1990s, Dobbs has been involved in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students at Murdoch University in Asian Studies, the University of Adelaide in History, and the University of Western Australia. His teaching responsibilities include first-year units such as ASIA1001 Asian Societies and Cultures and ASIA1002 Asia From Colonial to Modern, as well as second-year, honours, and masters-level units like ASIA2001 Culture Society and the State in Asia.

Dobbs's research specializations cover the social and political history of Southeast Asia, with particular interests in Singapore and Malaysia, the history and early development of the Port of Singapore and its role in global maritime trade, environmental history relating to the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, water and development issues along the Mekong River and in Timor Leste, and Islam in Southeast Asia. He is fluent in English and Malay. Key publications include his book The Singapore River: A Social History, 1819-2002 (2003); The Origins of Urban Renewal in Singapore: A Transnational History (2023, with Kah Seng Loh); Unsafety and Unions in Singapore’s state-led industrialization, 1965–1994 (2020, with Kah Seng Loh); Open or Bordered? Singapore, Industrialisation and Malaysian Workers (2019, with Kah Seng Loh); Thailand's Kra Isthmus and Elusive Canal Plans since the 1850s (2016); and co-editing Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments (2013, with Kah Seng Loh and Ernest Koh). Dobbs has received nominations for Excellence in Teaching at UWA from 2007 to 2017, including in the Research Supervision category in 2009. He participated in a 2010 Australian Learning and Teaching Grant and received a 2006 UWA Small Grant as Chief Investigator for a project on Kra Isthmus canal proposals. He is affiliated with the Centre for Muslim States and Societies.