Thum Ping Tjin () (born 17 December 1979), also known as PJ Thum, is a Singaporean historian, journalist, podcaster, activist and former swimmer. Thum was a national swimmer who participated in the 1996 Summer Olympics, and was the first Singaporean to swim the English Channel. He was a research associate and coordinator of Project Southeast Asia, a collective of scholars of Southeast Asian studies at Oxford, and is an academic visitor of the university. He is a founder and manager of online journalism outlet New Naratif and creator of The History of Singapore podcast, which originally ran as a radio show on BFM 89.9. His advocacy has led to a number of legal and public disputes with Singaporean politicians and authorities. Early life Born on 17 December 1979 in Singapore, Thum received his early education at five of the Anglo-Chinese Schools. Swimming career At the age of 16, Thum represented Singapore in four swim races at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, but did not make it past the heats in his individual butterfly or team medley and freestyle events. During his studies at the University of Oxford, Thum captained the university's swimming team and earned two Blues times. In 2002, he retired from the Singaporean national swimming team but continued to represent Oxford in swimming. On 6 August 2005, Thum swam solo across the English Channel in 12 hours and 24 minutes, and became the first Singaporean to do so. While preparing for his Channel swim, Thum also set a world record when he swam around the Rock of Gibraltar in 2 hours and 52 minutes. Academic and journalism career Thum is a recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship and Commonwealth Scholarship. From 2012 to 2014, Thum was a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). Since 2014, Thum has been a research associate at Oxford's Centre for Global History; a fellow of Green Templeton College; and the coordinator of Project Southeast Asia. In 2015, Thum was elected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2017, Thum co-founded independent online journalism outlet New Naratif and has managed it since then. In March 2018, Al Jazeera interviewed Thum for the documentary The House That Lee Built. where he claimed he had been fired from his research fellowship at National University of Singapore (NUS) after publishing and lecturing about his research which claimed