WHERE COMPARATIVE POLITICS MEETS METHODS: CENTRING THE LOCAL SINGAPOREAN CONTEXT IN AN UNDERGRADUATE METHODS COURSE

Methodological instruction in Political Science undergraduate curriculum often provides a broad but abstract introduction to the subject. However, this approach often fails to engage students’ positions and specific interests in researching the context in which they are situated and neglects to highlight the unspoken centrality of the Western academy in shaping how research methods are imagined and carried out. This paper argues for an alternative way of imagining methodological instruction by examining an undergraduate course offered in the National University of Singapore which straddles Comparative Politics and Methodological subfields entitled ‘Researching Singapore Politics’. It argues that the centring of the local context in a research methods course is part of the broader project of decolonising the curriculum because it decentres Western epistemologies, challenges student-instructor hierarchies, and introduces discussions about the role of power in the production of knowledge.