Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His recent books include The Eurasian Core and its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (ISEAS 2016).

312 posts

Covid-19 Exclusives: Time to Dare Imagine the Best Possible New Normal

4 min read

THERE WERE FOREWARNINGS that something like the Covid-19 pandemic would hit the world; and yet, it came as a big surprise to most governments. To those that did...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

May We Remain Tentative When Understanding Others

2 min read

Calling a spade a spade is easy enough when you live in a small monolingual and mono-cultural society – such societies are necessarily small. But try do...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Must We Stay Victims of Past Strategies?

2 min read

From August 2, 2011, the name of the research centre that produces this magazine is changed from SERI to Penang Institute.While there are several reasons fo...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

To Leave is a Basic Right

3 min read

COVID-19 HAS killed over 1.5 million people worldwide, crippled huge segments of the economy and made fear for our individual safety a nagging concern. Masks an...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

More Federalism, Less Centralism

2 min read

Malaysians are known to be multilingual as a rule, especially in urban or semi-urban areas where flows of cultures mingle.This mingling can take place in an...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

The Search Engine Revolution

2 min read

I remember fidgeting for endless hours on the Internet back in the mid-1990s. To be honest, that was the reason why my studies took so long to complete.The...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Top Policy Priorities in the Wake of the Crisis

4 min read

AS COVID-19 steadily dismantles the Old Normal, our uncertainties get more and more focused on basics. No longer do we worry as much about that continually post...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Literally Peaking

2 min read

Indeed, becoming literate used to be one of the best career moves anyone could make. In ancient China for example, extended families would concentrate their r...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Bookstores and Our Weak Sense of Self-worth

2 min read

I shall tell you a secret. Whenever in Dublin, I actually prefer browsing through bookstores to bumming down at a public house for a piece of steak washed dow...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Gender Relations: A Wrestle or a Dance?

2 min read

SOCIOLOGY IS THE study of how a certain society functions, and central to that ambition is the study of how different genders relate to each other in that socie...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Nicol David: So Much Done, So Much to Do

10 min read

DATO’ NICOL DAVID was the first famous personality to be profiled by Penang Monthly. This was in February 2010, in the magazine’s third issue, in an...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Turning isolating distance into social space

2 min read

Like people in most developing countries, Malaysians suffer automobiles not only as a necessary tool for modern living, but as a purported key driver of the e...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng