Building on The Past
7 min read
The Socio-Economic & Environmental Research Institute (SERI) has now changed its name to Penang Institute. The launch of the new moniker took place on Dec...
Penang Institute Begins
1 min read
“We are here to ponder the future of the world from Penang,” Penang Institute's executive director Liew Chin Tong explained in his opening remarks....
Think City Catalyst For Revitalising George Town
6 min read
Hamdan Abdul Majeed has reason to celebrate, the day of the interview also marks his fifth year working on what Khazanah Nasional1 has ambitiously dubbed the...
SMEs in Malaysia and Penang
3 min read
What is the progress of SMEs in Malaysia?Over the years, policies, strategies, initiatives and incentives to promote SME development have been chart...
The Tale of Two Economies
16 min read
Fiat money Welcome to the world of derivatives where nothing is worth a lot!In the old days, money had its equivalent value in gold – the value of an...
Developing The Hill Is An Uphill Climb
6 min read
Penang Hill remains one of the state’s more politically sensitive issues today. With renewed development efforts coming under fire from activists and the...
Small and Medium Enterprises – The Drivers of Change
9 min read
Defining SMEs The substantial role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the domestic economy as an agent of growth has generally been recognised througho...
Saying It With Food - The Culinary Heritage of Penang’s Jawi Peranakan
7 min read
History, kinship and family The Jawi Peranakan was the most visible hybrid Straits Muslim community in the Straits Settlements during the colonial era. In lif...
Malaysians! Know Your Governments
6 min read
With 2012 being a possible election year, Malaysians will hear endless speculation about possible poll dates and outcomes. In making a decision on who to vote f...
The George Town Literary Festival 2011 - A Storybook Success
5 min read
In November 2011, the weekend-long inaugural George Town Literary Festival got underway. It is indeed hard to believe that the 225-year-old city had never hoste...
Tribute to Khoo Khay Jin (1948-2011)
4 min read
The community of social science scholars and public intellectuals in Malaysia and Malaysianists are once again shocked and grieved, this time to hear of the unt...
Peaceful Assembly Bill 2011 – A Further Blow to Democracy
6 min read
In his Malaysia Day message delivered on the eve of September 16, 2011, Prime Minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak announced what many initially thought was good news...