Northern Illinois University
World Languages and Cultures
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Research Interests

My research trajectory has evolved from reading newspapers and magazines on microfilm and interviewing women soldiers to quietly observing, reflecting, and uncovering how certain words, people, and events remain absent from the writing of history—and making it my priority to bring them to light. I also strive to move beyond writing history in isolation, shifting toward featuring makers, doers, practitioners, i.e., architects of history and society in my work, giving them space to tell their own stories. This approach shaped my second major project: two edited volumes on Myanmar Feminism and LGBTQ in Myanmar/Burma. My current research interests include social movements such as rice riots, print media, feminism, and the Burmese language.

Publications

Books

(2024) Teaching Training Toolkit: Place-based Education and Storytelling (PDF), co-authored with Li Yi, Jyothi Trivikraman, and Surajit Sarkar

(2024) Editor, Special Issue on Feminism (PDF), Issue 2, Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, Wanida Press, Chiang Mai

(2023) Editor, Special Issue on Feminism, Issue 1, Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, Wanida Press, Chiang Mai

(2021) co-authored with Ingrid Jordt and Sue Ye Lin, ‘How Generation Z Galvanized a Revolutionary Movement against Myanmar’s 2021 Military Coup. ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

(2014) Women of Modern Burma, Routledge

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

(2024) ‘Place-based Education and Community Storytelling’ in IIAS Newsletter, number 98 Place-Based Education and Community Storytelling | IIAS

(2024) ‘Myanmar Women Activism after the 2021 Coup’ in On the Front Lines: Women’s Mobilization for Democracy in an Era of Backsliding, edited by Brechenmacher et.al., Carnegie Europe

(2023) ‘Is There Such a Thing as Myanmar Feminism’ (PDF) in edited volume, Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship

(2022) ‘Identity Corridors: Multiple identities of Sittwe Muslim Youth and Becoming Rohingya’ (PDF) in ‘Flows and Fictions’ Flows and Fictions’ in Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces: Histories of Networking and Border Crossing edited by Gunnel Cederlöf and Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam Press, Amsterdam

(2021) ‘Why does Burma Studies or Area Studies need decolonization?’ Critical Asian Studies Commentary Board.

(2020) Nationalism (PDF): The Wrong Framework for Understanding Local Activism in Myanmar’, ISEAS Perspective, Singapore, No. 45

(2018) Lost in Translation (PDF): Feminism in Myanmar’, Working Paper Series IJBS

(2016) Mongla and Borderlands Politics of Myanmar’, Asian Anthropology, vol 15, issue 2, pp. 152-168

(2015) ‘Black Territory to Land of ‘Paradise’: The Changing Political and Social Landscape of Mongla’, in The Age of Asian Migration, vol. 2., Yuk Wah Chan et al., Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 131-156.

(2015) Nationalism, Religion, and Violence: Old and New Wunthanu Movements in Myanmar’, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 13:4, 12-24.

(2013), Understanding the Languages of Pyidawtha: Burmese Approaches to Development’, Journal of South East Asia Research, vol 21, number 4, pp. 639-654.

(2012) Debate on "Southeast Asia: An Idea Whose Time Is Past? Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde/  Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania, 168: 4, 508-510.

(2012) Commercial Burmanization (PDF): two adverts by Burmah Oil Company in postcolonial Burma",  IIAS Newsletter, Spring 2012, p. 34, 2012.

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

News Articles, Op-eds, Encyclopedia Entries, Reviews, and Reports

(2024) Beijing may have brokered a fragile truce in northern Myanmar—but it can't mask China's inability to influence warring parties' The Conversation

(2023) Military violence in Myanmar is worsening amid fierce resistance and international ambivalence’ The Conversation

(2022) Top democracy activists were executed in Myanmar - 4 key things to know The Conversation

(2021) Ruptured space allows Myanmar youths to reimagine a new education system (PDF), IIAS Newsletter, number 89, IIAS, The Netherlands.

(2021) Myanmar's brutal military was once a force for freedom—but it's been waging civil war for decades' The Conversation

(2021) 'Resistance to military regime in Myanmar mounts as nurses, bankers join protests—despite bloody crackdown The Conversation

(2018) 'Myanmar debates women's rights amid evidence of pervasive sexual and domestic violence The Conversation

(2014) Review (PDF) of Authority of Influence: Women and Power and Burmese History by Jessica Harriden in Southeast Asian Research Journal 22.2 (2014), 277-278.

(2014) Review of "Local and Transnational Institutions in the Formation of Chinese Migrant Communities in Colonial Burma" by Yi Li in Dissertation Reviews, May 2014.

(2012) Review of Local Traditions, Global Modernities: Dress, Identity and the Creation of Public Self-Images in Contemporary Urban Myanmar by Georg Noack in Aséanie 29

(2012) Review of The Return of Galon King by Maitrii Aung-Thwin in Journal of the Economic and Social History 55: 183-186.

(2012) "Do Elections in Myanmar Signal Real Change?" The Morningside Post, Columbia/SIPA (2012).

(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”

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

(2011) "Clinton's Visit to Burma: A New Political Frontier," The Platform

(2010) "Burma is No Closer to Democracy," The Guardian 8 Nov 2010.

Education

• Ph.D., SOAS (University of London), History
• M.A., SOAS, Southeast Asian Studies
• B.A., Grinnell College, Sociology and Biology