Sun Lim

Sun Sun Lim is Vice President, Partnerships and Engagement at the Singapore Management University where she is concurrently Professor of Communication and Technology at its College of Integrative Studies. From 2017-2022, she was Professor of Communication and Technology and Head of Cluster (Dean) of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). She has extensively researched the social impact of technology, focusing on technology domestication by families, workplace digital disruptions and public perceptions of smart city technologies. A prolific scholar, she has authored over 90 journal articles, books, and book chapters. Her research has been published in leading international journals including Nature, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, New Media & Society, and AI & Ethics. She authored Transcendent Parenting: Raising Children in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2020) and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Communication and Society (Oxford University Press, 2020). She is a Fellow of the International Communication Association, an honour conferred on the top 1% of communication scholars worldwide.

She has also played a key role in internationalising and de-Westernising media and communication studies through numerous journal articles, journal special issues and two important edited volumes: Mobile Communication and the Family - Asian Experiences in Technology Domestication. Dordrecht (Springer, 2016) and Asian Perspectives on Digital Culture: Emerging Phenomena, Enduring Concepts (Routledge, 2016). Her work has also helped to advance mobile communication scholarship. She established and edits the book series Mobile Communication in Asia: Local Insights, Global Implications (Springer). It publishes research on mobile communication in Asia, now into its sixth title and tackling themes as diverse as mHealth, games, political mobilisation, and social intimacies. The series has helped to highlight research on salient mobile communication trends in Asia, while providing emerging scholars with a viable platform for disseminating their research. She has also served as Reviews Editor for Mobile Media & Communication since the journal’s inception.

She also serves on the editorial boards of two book series and thirteen journals including the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, Communication, Culture & Critique, Journal of Children and Media, Social Media & Society and Asian Journal of Communication. She has been an active member of professional associations such as the International Communication Association (ICA) and the Association for Internet Researchers (AoIR). Within ICA, she served in various committees including the Publication Committee and the Applied Communication Research Awards committee that she also chaired. Within AoIR, she was a member of the Executive Committee and the Internet Research Ethics Working Group.

Besides her scholarly publishing, she makes it a point to share her insights with the broader public through writing op-eds, fielding media interviews and conducting talks and webinars. She has published 69 op-eds in diverse international publications including Scientific American, La Tribune, Nature, South China Morning Post and The Straits Times. She has fielded countless media interviews with outlets such as Wall Street Journal, Guardian, ChannelNewsAsia and The Business Times. She draws on her academic research to provide expert commentary on a wide range of issues pertaining to digital parenting, digital literacy, AI ethics, regulatory oversight of big data and machine learning, public perceptions of and resistance towards smart city technologies, and imperatives for the refinement of STEM education.

Beyond academia, she has channelled her energies into translating academic research to inform public policy formulation and public education. She is a member of the Social Science Research Council, Singapore Environment Council and the Media Literacy Council. From 2018-2020, she served as Nominated Member of Parliament in the 13th Parliament of Singapore. She has drawn on her involvement in various committees and in parliament to raise issues such as governance of the use of big data, priorities in digital literacy education, improvement in data sharing, regulatory overreach in eradicating online falsehoods, support for gender diversity in the technology sector, and digital rights for children. Most recently, she has collaborated with colleagues in academia and social services to push for universal digital access. She was named to the inaugural Singapore 100 Women in Tech list in 2020 for her pioneering research on technology and society. She advises leading technology companies on their product innovation, trust and safety policies and public education efforts. She is also Vice President of the Women in Technology chapter of the Singapore Computer Society where she drives initiatives for gender diversity and inclusion in the technology industry and STEM education.

In her 20-year academic career, she has established a robust record of university administration, having played a leadership role in university, faculty and department level committees pertaining to hiring and human resource development, curriculum development and pedagogical innovation, research communication and repository building, academia-industry partnerships, and student engagement and community outreach. Most notably, when she joined SUTD as Head of HASS in 2017, she transformed its HASS curriculum from traditional liberal arts into one where the intersections between HASS and STEM are productively interrogated. She introduced two new minors—Design, Technology and Society and Digital Humanities—that enable engineering and architecture majors to better understand their social mission through engaging with issues such as AI ethics in a deeper and more coherent fashion. She is also co-convener of SUTD’s Master of Urban Science, Policy and Planning programme. She has won eight awards for excellent teaching at both university and faculty level including the Faculty Teaching Excellence Innovation Award for her flipped classroom teaching.

QUALIFICATIONS

• PhD, London School of Economics, 2003
• MSc (Distinction), London School of Economics, 1999
• BSocSci (Honours), National University of Singapore, 1995

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Social Impact of Technology
• Digital Rights and Digital Literacy
• Future of Work
• AI Ethics and Data Governance

STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

• Digital Transformation
• Sustainable Living
• Growth in Asia