{{Short description|Singaporean academic, civil servant and poet}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2025}} {{Infobox writer | name = Aaron Shahril Yusoff Maniam | image = | caption = Aaron Maniam | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1979}} | occupation = Academic | language = English | nationality = Singaporean }} '''Aaron Shahril Yusoff Maniam''' (born 1979) is an academic, poet, and former civil servant. He is presently an academic with the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University and is a Senior Fellow for Advanced AI at the Centre for Future Generations, a Brussels-based think tank.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aaron Maniam {{!}} Blavatnik School of Government |url=https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/aaron-maniam-0 |access-date=18 June 2024 |website=www.bsg.ox.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Aaron Maniam |url=https://cfg.eu/team/aaron-maniam/ |access-date=19 December 2024 |website=Centre for Future Generations |language=en}}</ref>
== Biography == Maniam attended Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College, and was awarded the Singapore Public Service Commission’s Overseas Merit Scholarship in 1998. He graduated from Somerville College, Oxford, with double First Class Honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) in 2001. At Somerville, he was a Coombs Scholar and held the Mary Somerville prize for academic excellence. In 2000, he was President of the Oxford Economics Society in 2000. He went on to receive a Master of Arts degree in International and Development Economics from Yale University in 2002, and a PhD in Public Policy from Oxford University.<ref name="auto">{{Cite news|url=https://www.poetry.sg/browse/aaron-maniam/biography|title=Browse {{!}} Aaron Maniam|access-date=1 December 2018|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181201181141/https://www.poetry.sg/browse/aaron-maniam/biography|archive-date=1 December 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref>
Maniam is an alumnus of the Gifted Education Programme, and the Creative Arts Programme (CAP) jointly organised by the Gifted Education Branch, Ministry of Education and NUS Centre for the Arts.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.moe.gov.sg/education/programmes/gifted-education-programme/special-programmes/creative-arts-programme|title=Creative Arts Programme (CAP)|website=www.moe.gov.sg|access-date=1 December 2018}}</ref> He was mentored by Lee Tzu Pheng and Ho Poh Fun.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.softblow.org/aaronmaniam.html|title=SOFTBLOW {{!}} Aaron Maniam|website=www.softblow.org|access-date=1 December 2018}}</ref>
Maniam joined the Singapore government in 2004 where he first served with the North America Desk (2004–2006) and Singapore's Embassy in Washington DC (2006–2008). He was the principal coordinator for Congressional liaison and issues relating to the Middle East.<ref name="auto"/> In 2008, he was posted to the Strategic Policy Office (SPO) at the Public Service Division to work on scenario planning and analysing long-term trends relevant to Singapore.<ref name="auto1">{{Cite web|url=https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/aaron-maniam|title=Aaron Maniam|website=www.bsg.ox.ac.uk|language=en|access-date=1 December 2018}}</ref> In January 2010, he was appointed the first Head of the Singapore Government’s Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF). He led a team that authored ''Conversations for the Future: Volume I'', a history of Singapore's strategic planning from the 1980s and organised Singapore's inaugural “Foresight Conference” in October 2011.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.csf.gov.sg/our-work/Publications/Publication/Index/conversations-for-the-future|title=Conversations for the Future Vol. 1|website=www.csf.gov.sg|access-date=1 December 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190103161216/https://www.csf.gov.sg/our-work/Publications/Publication/Index/conversations-for-the-future|archive-date=3 January 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref>
In July 2011, Maniam was appointed Director of the Institute of Policy Development (later renamed the Institute of Public Sector Leadership) at the Civil Service College (CSC), and in 2012, he initiated the CSC Applied Simulation Training (CAST) Laboratory, an experiment to apply principles of “serious play” to training public officers to deal with complex environments.<ref name="auto1"/> He subsequently served as Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aaron Maniam |url=https://www.csc.gov.sg/fellowship-members-bios/aaron-maniam/ |access-date=18 June 2024 |website=www.csc.gov.sg |language=en}}</ref>
== Literary career == In 2003, Maniam won the First Prize for English poetry in the National Arts Council’s Golden Point Award.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nac.gov.sg/events/golden-point-award.html|title=NAC – Golden Point Award|website=www.nac.gov.sg|language=en|access-date=1 December 2018|archive-date=8 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181108194527/https://www.nac.gov.sg/events/golden-point-award.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> His first poetry collection, ''Morning at Memory’s Border'', was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2007 and his second poetry collection, ''Second Persons'', was published in 2018 under firstfruits publications.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://bookcouncil.sg/awards/singapore-literature-prize|title=Singapore Literature Prize {{!}} Awards {{!}} Singapore Book Council|last=Council|first=Singapore Book|access-date=1 December 2018|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://firstfruitspublications.com/second-persons/|title=Second Persons by Aaron Maniam|website=firstfruitspublications.com|language=en|access-date=1 December 2018|archive-date=1 December 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181201180916/http://firstfruitspublications.com/second-persons/|url-status=dead}}</ref>
His work has been featured in the online journals ''Stylus'' and ''Softblow''; ''Over There, a collection of Singapore and Australian poetry''; ''From the Window of Our Epoch'', a bilingual collection of Singapore and Malaysian poetry; as well as''&words'' and ''Little Things: A Poetry Anthology''. In 2009, he was one of 50 poets featured in ''Fifty on 50'', a collection to mark Singapore's 50th anniversary of internal self-government.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Fifty on 50|date=2009|publisher=National Arts Council|others=Thumboo, Edwin, 1933–|isbn=9789810846817|location=Singapore|oclc=450543695}}</ref>
Maniam has read his poetry at the Austin International Poetry Festival and for Australia's ABC Radio. The French government invited him as a featured poet to the 35th Festival Franco-Anglais de Po��sie in June 2011, and published his work in the bilingual journal ''La Traductiere'' as well as the French ''Journal des Poètes''. In May 2014, he was one of the writers featured in the University of Hong Kong’s ''Becoming Poets: The Asian English Experience'', which describes the creative process of a range of writers in various Asian countries. In August 2015, three of his poems were featured in ''From Walden to Woodlands'', an anthology of interfaith nature poetry in Singapore.<ref name="auto"/>
== Works == Poetry: * ''Morning at Memory's Border'' (firstfruits publications, 2005) {{ISBN|981-05-3610-0}} * ''Second Persons'' (firstfruits publications, 2018) {{ISBN|978-981-11-5737-0}}
== References == {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Maniam, Aaron}} Category:1979 births Category:Living people Category:Singaporean poets Category:Raffles Institution alumni Category:Raffles Junior College alumni Category:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford