Hey! 👋
Welcome to Kawan—our vibrant community of data heads and storytellers. We’re all about improving data literacy and sharing nuanced stories about Asia. Come hang!
what roots me to the core of this land? — issue #62
In 2013, I went to Japan for the first time, desperate for a break from stressful Singapore. But the non-stop bustle of Tokyo, with the near-identical welcoming chirp of sales people in every shop, made me feel more overwhelmed and overstimulated. Turns out what I needed wasn’t more city.
Growing Roots Through Our New Year’s Dinner Party
This past January, we hosted our new year’s dinner party, which has now become an annual tradition. When we organised the first one in 2023, we had wanted to gather our community in person for the first time at our office. As an organisation whose work—and, for that
Humans of Kontinentalist: Nabilah Said
Nabilah joined Kontinentalist in June 2022 as our new Editorial Lead. Over the past few months, she’s written a micro-story on Mystical…
What are the spaces where you feel safest? — issue #37
In school, I was always considered the smart kid who could do no wrong. While this sounds like a cliché, the cardinal rule at my all-girls Catholic high school was to never stray from this label assigned to me. “Stick to the status quo”, as dictated by one of the
The silent crises in our hands —issue #36
To me, it is a country whose brilliance sometimes casts a shadow on its untold stories. We may be attractive and glamorous from the outside à la Crazy Rich Asians, but what’s less talked about is how our society and its systems can often, intentionally or not, overlook the
Meet the Community! Daisy Chung, visual communicator and illustrator
Daisy Chung is an award-winning science visual communicator and illustrator based in California and originally from Taiwan.
The stories we tell of ourselves — issue #35
Writing stories as a child, I was always tempted to inhabit the bodies and worlds of others. My characters ate treacle pudding and scones with clotted cream, bursting through attics and chimneys, generally being up to no good in locales vastly different from my own. No surprise, as the books
Humans of Kontinentalist: Qijin Tay
Qijin first joined as a web development intern before becoming a full-time member of Kontinentalist. We interviewed her twice, once in each…
Meet the Community! Wendy Wang Shijia, data viz designer, Tableau Public Ambassador and Visionary
Wendy Wang Shijia is a Shanghai-based data visualization designer, Tableau Public Ambassador and Tableau Visionary. Drawing on her decade…
Of things that flow and connect— issue #34
How does our built infrastructure affect our lives and our identities? What do these indelible marks on our landscapes mean? These are some of the questions asked at a new exhibition opened by the Singapore Art Museum, titled Lonely Vectors, where a map of ours is on display. While I’
Humans of Kontinentalist: Angel Martinez
Angel interned with us in our editorial and marketing departments for six months. Ever bright and helpful, she’s contributed to many…
How to make: The workshop-survey data story
(or how to amp up a data story with Flourish viz + some code)
Humans of Kontinentalist: Hui Min Chun, Web Developer intern
How did you find Kontinentalist? At a time when I was just searching for any sort of internship whether full time or part time — because I was still in school — I saw the job posting for a web development intern on my school’s job portal. I applied as I
Stories of reclamation — issue #33
I think about this question a lot. Growing up in hyper-urban Singapore, we don’t so much think about land as we do country. Land is perceived by many states as a resource first, even though it encompasses and offers much more than that—a primordial and more holistic sense