Catherine Tan

In the context of her personal life, Catherine authentically came out and experienced the radical joy of being queer, despite challenges due to her cultural heritage as a descendant of stateless persons.

 

In the context of her professional life, Catherine’s queerness took the form of taking herself radically un-seriously. Coinciding with her years at Cambridge, Catherine pivoted from what she has described as a cushy career path. As an undergrad, she had the opportunity to speak in front of the United Nations and other intergovernmental bodies, advocating for human rights. By her early 20s, she was leading diplomatic delegations from Shanghai to DC, bumping elbows with policy elites, and brokering high-impact linkages from the UN to the World Bank-IMF. By 29, she was nominated to be the youngest National Technical Expert for Science Policy, a prestige usually given to senior policymakers.

 

“But somehow, these spaces just were not queer enough”, Catherine explains. “I don’t mean that they have no inclusivity for queer people; just that queerness to me means being wholly and completely alive, and these spaces had facets of being machine-like. Being by the book. Following someone else’s script. So I momentarily left that world and decided to do a PhD in something that feels wholly alive and creative: the legal philosophy of weird fringe things. I’m referring to: plant-object cyborgs, decentralised digital planets, floating utopias on the ocean, and outer space settlements. Broadly, I’m interested in the psychological depth behind their dazzle, and how both crystallise into legal form.”

 

Catherine’s PhD has won her a number of awards for intellectual innovation, including the prestigious Gates Cambridge Award. Her PhD has also led to spin-offs with global impact. Currently, she advises Global South governments on how to bolster their outer space programmes, and on how to enhance their bargaining power at the diplomatic table.

 

Catherine is the Founder CEO of J-22: Uncommon Future Press, a multi-award winning venture that wants to liberate knowledge from paywalls and oligopolies. Fusing education with the media & entertainment industry, Catherine explains that:

 

“They want to publish knowledge in bold creative formats, ranging from graphic novels to Disney Pixar-style narrative films. Much like its CEO, J-22 favours queerness, and is launching an initiative to build a queer literary canon. No longer will queer kids be forced to read heteronormative books, with J-22 in the market, they will experience the full breadth of representation.”