Singapore History Prize

The NUS Department of History warmly invites you to join us for a workshop on History and AI, which will showcase student-designed AI models built for researching Singapore history, as well as plans in the department to set up a History + AI lab. It will also feature a panel discussion among practicing historians, an archivist and a representative from Google, on the shifting meanings of historical narratives in the age of AI.

Many thanks to Google for co-sponsoring the 48-hour Singapore History + AI Hackathon. We had nine outstanding entries from 27 students across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the School of Computing, and Computer Engineering. Centered on Singapore history, the projects engaged with local archives, sources, and datasets, showing how AI can open up new ways of understanding the island’s past.

The winning team, Papyrus, developed a technique that surpassed the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models we had recommended, along with a range of innovative interface features.

“The future of History and AI is bright,” as our colleague Florin-Stefan Morar observed. It was indeed dazzling over those 48 hours, as we watched our undergraduate students build AI-assisted research interfaces that may fundamentally reshape how historians approach archives and documents, especially in the study of Singapore history.

The hackathon may be over, but the work has only just begun. Stay tuned!

On 20 January, the NUS Department of History held the event, "Celebrating Leluhur: From Gedung Kuning to Haji Yusoff Memorial Museum" at Hidayah Amin's private museum at 717 North Bridge Road. Hidayah is the founder and consultant of Helang Books. Author of ten non-fiction books and twelve children’s books, she won the 2015 Hedwig Anuar Book Award for Best Children’s Book for The Mango Tree, and the 2021 NUS Singapore History Prize for Leluhur: Singapore’s Kampong Gelam. We were honored to have the event graced by the former Speaker of Parliament Abdullah Tarmugi, and Professors Kishore Mahbubani, Wang Gungwu, Vineeta Sinha and Tania Li.

The NUS Department of History invites all NUS College of Humanities and Sciences, College of Design and Engineering, and School of Computing undergraduate students interested in applying computing solutions to complex textual and visual materials, to help create new research tools and methods for Singapore History!

Grouped into mixed teams of humanities, social sciences and computing students, participants will have 48 hours (28 Feb to 2 March 2026) to create technical solutions for the entire corpus of digitized British colonial archival files currently housed in the NUS Library. Organizers will provide access to a subset of the corpus and a starter pack. There will be opportunities to form teams at a pre-event mixer. Participants will develop technical solutions for handwriting OCR, searching and semantic analysis of the corpus.

The solutions will be implemented using Google Cloud. Mentorship from NUS professors and Google Could engineers will be available during the event. The solution will be judged by a panel and prizes will be given to the top 2 solutions ($5000 and $1000). We will judge the solution based on technical innovation (40%), historical utility (40%), interface and presentation (20%). All participants will receive a diploma crediting their contribution to Singapore History + AI. The event will take place at NUS. Food and drinks will be provided.

To apply, register your interest here by 31 Jan 2026: https://tinyurl.com/SingaporeHistoryHackathon

For inquiries, please write to Debbie Tay at [email protected]

This event is organized by the History Department in collaboration with the Singapore History Prize, Centre for Computational Social Science and Humanities (CSSH), and Google.

Best wishes,
Dr. Seng Guo Quan (History)
Dr. Florin-Stephan Morar (History)
A/P Miguel Escobar Varela (CSSH)

The NUS Department of History recently held the second event in our NUS Singapore History Prize series, Theatre and Singapore History: A Forum, on 24 November 2025 at the Shaw Foundation Alumni House Auditorium. The forum explored how theatre can illuminate Singapore’s past and how playwrights, directors, and performers engage with history through storytelling, memory, and creative interpretation. Our heartfelt thanks to moderator Alvin Lim Eng Hui and our outstanding panel consisting of Nabilah Said, Huzir Sulaiman, Stella Kon, and Alvin Tan for a thoughtful and lively discussion on the intersections between theatre and history. We were also honored to have Professor Kishore Mahbubani join us as Guest of Honour. A wonderful dinner reception by Chilli Manis followed the conversation. The evening also marked the launch of our fundraising campaign to establish an endowed faculty position in Singapore history.

Thank you once again for the strong support for both events in 2025 as we continue building meaningful conversations around Singapore’s history. Stay tuned for more Singapore History Prize events in 2026!

The new Arts and Multi-Media category of the Singapore History Prize will include entries from theatre. Please join us for this forum, moderated by Alvin Lim, and featuring Nabilah Said, Huzir Sulaiman, Stella Kon and Alvin Tan, on the intersections between theatre and Singapore History! A dinner reception will follow. (Eventbrite link below)

NUS Department of History held our first Singapore History Prize event "Gastronomic Travels: A Conversation with Khir Johari on Malay Foodways in Singapore History" on 22 Oct at the ACM (Asian Civilisations Museum). Many thanks to one and all for your strong support! We featured the author Khir Johari's prize-winning book, and served a sedaaaap-ilicious dinner reception after the conversation about food and history!

At our launch of the new round of the Singapore History Prize (2028), Professor Kishore Mahbubani gave every guest who attended some homework: please appeal to your friends to apply for the new multi-media category of the prize ($100,000)!

The menu is ready, and tickets are going fast. Come join us for an evening of intellectual nourishment and culinary adventure!