5 Minutes To ReadGreg Constantine shares stories about Rohingya educational achievement in Myanmar, from the photo project Ek Khaale, which documents Rohingya belonging in Myanmar.
Tags: education, ethnicity, event, photography, Rohingya, Toronto
January 20, 2025
6 Minutes To ReadShalini Perumal explores Myanmar women artists’ roles in times of political upheaval.
Tags: art, artists, democracy, gender, photography, revolution, women
February 12, 2024
11 Minutes To ReadDavid Scott Mathieson asks, if this is the quality of military propaganda, how could they have stayed in power for so long?
Tags: film, Jinghpaw, Kachin Independence Army (KIA), military, military propaganda
November 30, 2023
11 Minutes To ReadEmily Fishbein and Kelvin Sinpraw (pseudonym) show how a Kachin tradition defies borders.
Tags: borderlands, borders, culture, India, Jinghpaw, Kachin, Manau, Shapawng Yawng, Singpho
April 24, 2023
6 Minutes To ReadA new special issue in Geopolitics (edited by Jasnea Sarma, Hilary Faxon and K.B. Roberts) highlights pre- and post-coup extractive economies and political geographies in Myanmar and beyond.
Tags: borders, colonialism, environment, geopolitics, People's Defence Force (PDF)
March 31, 2022
14 Minutes To ReadHitomi Fujimura explores how Karen Baptists understood “modern knowledge” in nineteenth-century America.
Tags: Burma, Christianity, Karen, modernity, railways
March 14, 2022
10 Minutes To ReadCourtney Wittekind interviews filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky about his film, “A Thousand Fires,” set in Magway.
Tags: activism, film, labour, Magway
December 7, 2021
8 Minutes To ReadChristian Gilberti reviews a recent book on Persian travellers in Southeast Asia.
Tags: Arakan, Burma, colonialism, history, India, Islam, Konbaung, Mrauk U, Persia, Southeast Asia
November 25, 2021
7 Minutes To ReadStephen Campbell translates Ludu Daw Ahmar’s feminist critique of the gendered division of labour.
Tags: feminism, gender, translation
August 11, 2021
10 Minutes To ReadAxel Harneit-Sievers cautions against a problematic argument made in a new publication.
Tags: Book Review, colonialism, development, human rights, international law, law, Rohingya
April 19, 2021
3 Minutes To ReadJotika Khur-Yearn discusses the legacy of Professor Sai Aung Tun’s work on Tai Shan communities.
December 3, 2020
9 Minutes To ReadBertie Alexander Lawson considers how travellers struggle to understand Myanmar through the lens of novels and travelogues.
Tags: fiction, tourism, travel, travelogue, voluntourism
November 23, 2020
6 Minutes To ReadDinith Adikari and Michael Dunford explore the role of the aphyaw hsayar and the challenges they face in today’s tea market.
Tags: employment, Mandalay, migrant workers, tea, tea shops, Yangon
September 14, 2020
5 Minutes To ReadReshmi Banerjee reviews an engrossing tale of family history, national politics and regional cuisine.
Tags: Book Review, discrimination, history, nationalism
August 25, 2020
7 Minutes To ReadTha Peng Cung examines the reasons for severe deforestation in Chin State.
Tags: Chin State, colonial burma, environment, forests
August 24, 2020
15 Minutes To ReadShona Loong uses world histories of anti-colonial nationalism to reexamine the Karen struggle.
Tags: bamar, Burman, colonialism, federalism, history, Karen, nationalism, Salween
August 13, 2020
4 Minutes To ReadKeith Lyons reviews a book that offers insights into a Myanmar beyond the tourist gaze.
Tags: Book Review, colonialism, tourism, travel, travelogue
June 29, 2020
10 Minutes To ReadDavid Scott Mathieson reviews Andrew Selth’s 2019 book on Myanmar’s notorious intelligence services.
Tags: Book Review, ceasefire, prison, security, Tatmadaw, United Wa State Army (UWSA)
May 18, 2020
5 Minutes To ReadElizabeth Rhoads reviews Ardeth Thawngmung’s 2019 book on the politics of quotidian survival strategies in Myanmar.
Tags: Book Review, economy, livelihoods
April 22, 2020
6 Minutes To ReadMichael Edwards asks how to navigate Yangon using a transit map of Seoul.
Tags: buddhism, Christianity, modernity, religion, South Korea, Yangon
April 21, 2020
9 Minutes To ReadDavid Brenner discusses the synergies and productive tensions between different perspectives on Rebel Politics.
Tags: ethnic armed organisations, Kachin, Karen, political economy, rebel politics, rebellion, Salween
April 17, 2020
4 Minutes To ReadKai Htang Lashi comments on Rebel Politics from the perspective of a Kachin activist.
Tags: activism, ethnic armed organisations, Kachin, peacebuilding, rebel politics
April 16, 2020
7 Minutes To ReadShona Loong discusses what Rebel Politics tells us about peacebuilding among Karen communities.
Tags: ethnic armed organisations, Kachin, Karen, Karen National Union (KNU), Mae Sot, peacebuilding, rebel politics
April 15, 2020
4 Minutes To ReadLee Jones discusses the merits of Rebel Politics in light of wider trends in the fields of Myanmar Studies and Conflict Studies. This is Part One of a four-part commentary on […]
Tags: conflict studies, ethnic armed organisations, Kachin, Karen, rebel politics
April 14, 2020
2 Minutes To ReadThis is an introduction to a four-part commentary on David Brenner’s monograph, Rebel Politics: A Political Sociology of Armed Struggle in Myanmar’s Borderlands (Cornell University Press, 2019), in which the authors […]
Tags: borderlands, conflict, ethnic armed organisations, Kachin, Karen, rebel politics, rebellion
4 Minutes To ReadTony Scott introduces an important new digital archive of Myanmar manuscripts.
Tags: buddhism, manuscripts, Pali
April 1, 2020
12 Minutes To ReadFrances O’Morchoe details the lesser-known history of the Myanmar-China railway in nineteenth-century Burma.
Tags: borders, China, colonial burma, history, Islam, Panthay, railways, Shan State, Yunnan
March 2, 2020
7 Minutes To ReadChu May Paing reviews a new book on narratives of siege and fear in three cities of Myanmar.
Tags: Arakan, Book Review, Islam, Mandalay, Rakhine, Rohingya, Yangon
January 9, 2020
14 Minutes To ReadAndrew Selth assesses the value of military medals to researchers interested in Burma’s modern history. It has been said that a country’s culture is a window unto its soul. With this […]
Tags: history, independence
December 23, 2019
6 Minutes To ReadKhin Mar Mar Kyi reviews Ward Keeler’s book on gender and Burmese Buddhist practices in Myanmar.
Tags: Book Review, buddhism, gender, masculinity
November 27, 2019
9 Minutes To ReadDaniel Wood reviews how Myanmar Media in Transition unravels legacies of authoritarianism, carving new spaces for dissent.
Tags: authoritarianism, Book Review, censorship, journalism, media, social media
November 4, 2019
19 Minutes To ReadNicolas Salem-Gervais and Mael Raynaud discuss the prospects of ethnic minority languages standardization..
Tags: Burmese, Chin State, ethnic languages, ethnic minorities, Kachin, Kayan, Lisu, Rawang, textbooks
September 24, 2019
20 Minutes To ReadNicolas Salem-Gervais and Mael Raynaud discuss the teaching of ethnic minority languages in government schools.
Tags: culture, ethnic languages, ethnic minorities, policy, teaching, textbooks
September 23, 2019
15 Minutes To ReadHtet Thiha Zaw examines if early history explains subsequent state presence in Bago, Myanmar.
Tags: Bago, colonialism, development, forests, history, Konbaung, social welfare
September 11, 2019
4 Minutes To ReadJenny Hedström writes on the importance of a new open-source bibliography for Burma Studies, now hosted on Tea Circle.
Tags: burma studies, gender, knowledge, women
September 9, 2019
12 Minutes To ReadKimberley Pallenschat discusses Myanmar’s independent cinema and filmmaking.
Tags: censorship, cinema, film, freedom of expression, Yangon
September 5, 2019
6 Minutes To ReadReshmi Banerjee reviews a new anthology on Myanmar’s political transition and governance. Myanmar’s transformation from a military dictatorship to a relatively democratic form of governance has been under scrutiny for […]
Tags: Book Review, borderlands, ethnicity, governance, land rights, peace process, transition
July 17, 2019
11 Minutes To ReadIn the final part of this series, Bobby Anderson elaborates on the realities of opium-growing areas of Chin state, and their divergence from both existing stereotypes and the triage described in Part One and Two.
Tags: agriculture, Chin, conflict, drugs, infrastructure, opium, peace process
July 6, 2019
13 Minutes To ReadIn Part Two of a three-part series, Bobby Anderson examines the case of Tonzang and its exception to conditions for opium-funded insurgencies in Myanmar, as outlined in Part One.
Tags: agriculture, Chin, Chin National Front (CNF), conflict, drugs, infrastructure, insurgency, Kuki, opium, peace process, Tonzang
July 4, 2019
22 Minutes To ReadBobby Anderson, in Part One of a three-part series on opium and insurgency in Tonzang, examines some elements of traditional understandings of insurgency, statebuilding and opium.
Tags: agriculture, Chin, conflict, drugs, ethnic conflict, infrastructure, insurgency, opium, peace, peace process, Tonzang
July 1, 2019
10 Minutes To ReadMarie Puyessegur explores events in part one of a three-part series conducted as part of the MEMORY! Heritage Film Festival, an annual event in Yangon.
Tags: censorship, democracy, film, freedom of expression, journalism, media, Yangon
April 29, 2019
6 Minutes To ReadElliott Prasse-Freeman argues that a new book sacrifices analytical rigor for antipolitical “objectivity.”
Tags: Book Review, diaspora, Rakhine, Rohingya
March 20, 2019
11 Minutes To ReadMael Raynaud reviews a new resource for scholarship on Myanmar.
Tags: agriculture, Book Review, environment, ethnic languages, farmers, gender, governance, hate speech, political economy, technology
March 7, 2019
5 Minutes To ReadReshmi Banerjee reviews Jennifer Rigby’s telling of twelve remarkable Myanmar women and their life histories.
Tags: art, Book Review, freedom of expression, gender, women
November 28, 2018
4 Minutes To ReadHelen Mears and Sandra Dudley peek inside Myanmar’s National Museum in Nay Pyi Taw.
Tags: culture, memory, museum, Nay Pyi Taw
October 15, 2018
3 Minutes To ReadElliott Fox enjoys this series of tributes to a much-missed friend of Yangon.
Tags: architecture, Book Review, tea shops, Yangon
October 8, 2018
8 Minutes To ReadDavid Scott Mathieson discovers some curious displays in Pansodan’s thriving book stalls.
Tags: Rakhine State, Rohingya, Yangon
September 17, 2018
5 Minutes To ReadReshmi Banerjee explores the trans-border relevance of the archaeological site of Bagan.
Tags: archaeology, Bagan, Book Review, Manipur, Mrauk U
September 10, 2018
6 Minutes To ReadDavid Scott Mathieson explores the new collection of essays by noted journalist Kyaw Zwa Moe, an emotional palimpsest of lives lived under military rule.
Tags: Book Review, Burma, political prisoners, prison
August 27, 2018
13 Minutes To ReadKhin Myat Myat Wai reports on offshore raft fishing in Myanmar, as translated by Stephen Campbell.
Tags: journalism, Pyapon, workers' rights
August 22, 2018