Behind the research: Kellynn Wee

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Migrating out of Poverty consortium has drawn on the enthusiasm and expertise of many people across the globe. This blog series focuses on the people behind the research, who have kindly shared personal reflections and learning from their experience of working with the consortium.

Kellynn is a Research Associate at Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore and worked with Migrating out of Poverty from 2015 to 2017. During that time she worked on the migration industry theme conducting policy research and was also involved in communications and social media outreach.

"Working on Migrating out of Poverty gave me the rare opportunity to inhabit multiple universes at once: not only was I able to test my conceptual ideas in the domain of academia, I was able to see how these forms of knowledge translated into the worlds of advocacy and policy. The reminder that these realms are not separate, but that it takes conscious effort to cross and translate between them, will continue to shape my work.   

I'm most proud of the relationships we built with local NGOs and schools through Migrating out of Poverty's emphasis on communicating our research. Speaking to young people about the situation of migrant domestic workers in Singapore and sometimes prompting them to volunteer, or even simply to re-examine a social reality that many of us take for granted, was a very rewarding experience.   

The biggest lessons I learned were from working with such an international team. The opportunity to speak with and learn from the excellent people I met from South Africa, Bangladesh, the UK, and Ghana was very precious to me.”

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has been a true team effort, and we appreciate the role each individual has played in producing and disseminating the research.

Thank you for all your hard work with the Migrating out of Poverty programme, Kellynn!