Jun Wei Lee is a senior from Singapore studying History and Philosophy, interested in British colonial labor law in 19th-century Malaya and Singapore as it relates to Indian labor migration. His senior thesis explores how ideas about contract law were used to justify the morality of indentured labor migration as an acceptable replacement to slavery, and the ways that labor law was used as a technology for governing migrant populations. For the Kellogg Institute, Lee is working with Professor Paul Ocobock to conduct archival research on Kenyan governmental records for his book manuscript on the history of the Kenyan coffee industry.
Lee has previously received research grants from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Franco Family Institute, and the Glynn Family Honors Program to do research in the US (California) and the UK (London). He has also presented his research at conferences in Notre Dame and Philadelphia. Lee is also an Ethics Research Fellow for Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, where he is examining the ethics of indentured labor in the British Empire.
Thesis Title: Worthy of Contract? Labor Law, Economic Freedom, and Indian Indentured Labor to the Straits Settlements
Thesis Adviser: Fr. Robert Sullivan