SMU Associate Professor of Theatre/Performance Studies Margaret Chan’s research on Chinese spirit-medium worship sheds light on political events playing out on the international stage. Even though spirit-medium worship and its practices have endured thousands of years, Associate Prof Chan said that the academic community has only recently begun to notice that the real pulse of the Chinese people beats in popular religion, rather than in Buddhism, Confucianism or Daoism. Such recent academic interest indicates that there is a promising future in the study of spirit-medium worship and other forms of popular religion, she opined.