QS Insights Magazine: The accidental academic
Dr Venka Purushothaman on his journey to becoming president of LASALLE College of the Arts.
Sometimes mimes give the best advice.
It was while working on secondment as the Director of Marketing for the Singapore Arts Festival that Dr Venka Purushothaman, recently appointed President of LASALLE College of the Arts, says his interest was piqued in doctorate studies.
His role in the festival, which came after proving himself as a capacity builder in Singapore’s bourgeoning arts scene, helped to crystalise a number of experiences and interests together.
In that role, he served as liaison for French actor and mime Marcel Marceau, who, for his own reasons, chose to dismiss the team assisting of their duties and requested Dr Purushothaman accompany him for the day.
The experience opened his eyes to the philosophy of place and connection.
“[Marceau] knew people like [French philosopher Michel] Foucault,” he tells QS Insights.
“I learnt so much about how his own practice was very much influenced by the French intellectuals. And that situating knowledge production, at the heart, is not divorced from the philosophy that you live in.”
The small interaction within the context of the broader discoveries of the role would play no small part in Dr Purushothaman eventually completing a PhD in Cultural Policy and Asian Cultural Studies, teaching him lessons he now bring to his role as President of LASALLE.
Building Singapore’s arts scene from the ground up
Singapore-born Dr Purushothaman jokes that he’s an “accidental academic”. Accidental or not, he began his studies purposefully, undertaking a Bachelor of English Literature and Communication Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. He would later study a Master of Arts with a focus on Shakespeare and Postcolonial Studies at the same institution.
“I was always kind of curious about cultures, histories, traditions and communities,” he observes.
It was in the 1990s, when he returned to Singapore, that his “accidental” journey to academia began. At the time, Singapore was in a period of capacity building and infrastructure development which would lead the way for the city-state to become a global hub.
As part of that transition, there was also a renewed focus on the arts, and Dr Purushothaman secured a role within the National Arts Council Singapore, his first position within the arts industry.
Among the council’s responsibilities was the conception of what would become the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, a durian-shaped arts centre and landmark that forms part of the Marina Bay skyline. When its design was unveiled in 1994, The Straits Times called it “a landmark for the year 2000”.
Dr Purushothaman says working on the project came with a number of challenges. One was meeting the needs of stakeholders including artists, government agencies and the public. But, he says he and his team were also mindful of creating a space that was not only practical, but also created a “a situated experience of being in Asia”, a philosophy rooted in his own interests around cultures and histories.
Reflecting on this time, he says he was excited to be part of a team that built something from the ground up. “In many ways it… [building from the ground up] became a kind of defining feature of my career,” he notes.
Within that was also capacity building. “In Singapore… while infrastructure was very good in the “hardware”, the “software” development of the community or the pipeline was not there,” he says.
“I felt that that needed better connective tissue between the creatives who ultimately would populate not only content, but also be a lifeline of the environment that they create.”
It was this role that would lead Dr Purushothaman to his secondment to the Singapore Arts Festival and time with Marceau, culminating in his PhD and a philosophy for the arts in Singapore that would carry over to LASALLE.
Creating the next capacity builders
Dr Purushothaman joined LASALLE in 2000 as a lecturer. Bringing his experiences in infrastructure and multi-stakeholder projects and events helped shape his view on education.
“I’m always mindful that education must pertain very clearly to how the cultural economy really flourishes, and not the outside of that,” he says, adding that he sees this system not in a transactional way, but as a form of self-propagation. “It’s very much an embodied way that [education and the cultural economy are] feeding off each other.”
With that in mind, he says that when he joined LASALLE, one of his first tasks was around curriculum restructure, starting with arts management– his area of expertise – before moving through areas such as performing arts, acting and music.
“I was very much about situating the artists in the community that we belong to. And so, my career kind of became around restructuring.”
While Dr Purushothaman has made a career out of restructuring, LASALLE itself has also changed significantly throughout its history. Founded in 1984, and originally known as St Patrick’s Arts Centre, by the time Dr Purushothaman joined the college, it had already established itself as an important part of developing Singapore’s art community.
Strategic partnerships with overseas education providers, including RMIT in Australia, Open Universities, UK, and Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as public and private investment, most notably from Singapore Airlines, saw both its education offering and campus expand.
In 2021, in alliance with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, also in Singapore, LASALLE formed the University of the Arts Singapore (ranked =67 in the 2026 QS Subject Rankings for Arts and Design), the first art university for the city-state.
Comparing both the history of LASALLE and Dr Purushothaman’s career, there is a shared desire to create new connections that are relevant to today’s needs. The adaptation of curriculum also comes with its creativity to overcome present day challenges.
AI, for example, has created anxieties its impact, particularly in the humanities and arts, but he sees their role in understanding it better. “Anxiety around new technology has always been there in the human condition,” he tells QS Insights. “It’s well documented when radio was introduced, television was introduced, at every stage, some sort of an anxiety that comes through.
“We have to always understand the medium in that we’re dealing with, and the role of humanities is to humanise their experience.”
Likewise, he says, instead of focusing on how AI or any technology might affect the arts, we should instead focus on how the Arts will affect AI and technology.
“The arts provides phenomenal perspectives on how these emerging technologies can be transformational to our imagination,” says Dr Purushothaman.
“In LASALLE, we use technologies as a method or material… it’s integrated into only our thinking, not to be anxious about it, but to thoroughly work through the imagining of how we want to structure it.”
This perspective essentially sees Dr Purushothaman’s new role as President of LASALLE helping to create the next capacity builders of the arts scene for Singapore and beyond. “I think it’s incumbent on us as educators not to look at our students as conceptual beings, but really shaping individuals in the way they can sustain their livelihood because they’re able to imagine a future to be wanted for themselves,” he says.
If Dr Purushothaman is the accidental academic, he isn’t leaving his legacy at the institution to chance.
“I would like to see LASALLE stratified as an international hub for the arts not only just for LASALLE and Singapore, but I think for globally, need quite a bit of space for that.”
Story reproduced and courtesy of QS Insights Magazine. Access the original here.