Tharaphi Than

PhD, SOAS (University of London), History
MA, SOAS, Southeast Asian Studies
BA, Grinnell College, Sociology and Biology

In the course of following the footsteps of my mother, I enrolled at a medical school in Rangoon in 1996. But soon after we were formally welcomed to the school, the college was shut down after a series of student demonstrations. Fate took me to the cornfields of Iowa, and I ended up studying at a small liberal arts college called Grinnell for four years. Then I went to London to do an MA and then a PhD. My research interests include women of Burma and Southeast Asia, print media and migration. I am also working on producing intermediate Burmese language materials in both book form and digital formats. For non-academic work, I volunteer at a small charity based in Burma (Myanmar), Link Emergency Aid & Development (LEAD).

Publications

Women of Modern Burma, Routledge, forthcoming (contracted March 2011, to be published in 2013).

Review of Local Traditions, Global Modernities: Dress, Identity and the Creation of Public Self-Images in Contemporary Urban Myanmar in ASÉANIE, forthcoming.

From Kitchen to Battle Ground: Prelude to the Creation of the Burma Women’s Army during the Japanese Occupation,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, forthcoming.

Review of The Return of Galon King in Journal of the Economic and Social History 55, p. 183-186, 2012.

“Commercial Burmanization: two adverts by Burmah Oil Company in postcolonial Burma,” IIAS Newsletter, Spring 2012, p. 34, 2012.

Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopaedia in Volume 3: Cultural Sociology of East Asia; Part 3, 1900 to Present: “Burma (Myanmar),” 2012.

Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopaedia in Volume 3: Cultural Sociology of East Asia; Part 3, 1900 to Present: “Chinese Diaspora,” 2012.

“Understanding prostitutes and prostitution in democratic Burma, 1942-1962: State jewels or victims of modernity?” South East Asia Research Journal 19.3, p. 537-566 (2011).

Review of Journal Kyaw Ma Ma Lay, “Man Like Him,’’ South East Asia Research Journal, 18.3 (2010).

In Preparation

“You Take the High Road, I’ll Take the Low Road: Factors Surrounding Migration between Burma-China and Burma-Thailand.”

“His Brain is Not Red Anymore: Intergenerational Ideological Differences among Chinese Communities in Burma.”

“Understanding the Language of Pyidawtha: Burmese Approaches to Development.”

E-mail Tharaphi Than
Watson Hall 122
(815) 753-6453