This week’s New Pubs features LiLi Mie et al on food insecurity among low-income urban neighborhoods in Myanmar; Zreik on how the coup impacted tourists’ perceptions of Burma as a travel destination; and Gao on the Tai Association in the China/Myanmar/Thailand borderlands.
See our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.
source: wikipedia
This week’s New Pubs features Bowser’s book on how late British rule exacerbated anti-Indian sentiment in Burma; You on the way Myanmar Muslims refuse citizenship along the Chinese border; and Hattori and Tual Sawn Khai on Japanese humanitarian post-coup aid to Myanmar.
See our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.
Date: Tuesday 30 September 2025 Time zone: 5:30-6:30pm AEST, 2-3pm MMT, 9.30-10.30am CEST Zoom: Register now for this dialogue |
| Abstract ‘Real change’: This was the NLD’s pitch to voters in Myanmar’s 2015 election, a moment that came to symbolise the formal end of military rule. A vote for the party was a vote for a radical break from the past—or so the slogan implied in a familiar rhetorical move. At the same time, the offer of ‘real change’ was at the heart of local Pentecostal efforts to evangelise to Buddhists: the promise that Jesus would fundamentally transform their lives. Entering an emerging public sphere, believers shared the gospel in the hope of sparking a ‘revival’ in a largely Buddhist nation. Today, in the wake of the 2021 coup and ahead of Myanmar’s sham election this December, this paper revisits the 2015 election, tracking the work of ‘real change’ across interrelated registers—from everyday conversations between Pentecostals and Buddhists, to international discourses about the ‘transition’ that was ostensibly ‘saving’ the country. Unpacking the combination of anticipation and skepticism that ‘real change’ engenders, this seminar will highlight that attention to discourses and practices of religious conversion might offer insight into the work of the real in the political life of Myanmar and elsewhere. Speaker Michael Edwards is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney whose research focuses on religious life, media ecology, and political change. His first book, Real Change: Myanmar and the Dissonance of Salvation, has been selected for the Atelier series at the University of California Press. His articles have appeared (or are forthcoming) in venues including JRAI, American Anthropologist and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. host: MRC Dialogue Series 2025 A series of hybrid dialogues, presented in-person and online, hosted by the ANU Myanmar Research Centre. more info |
This week’s New Pubs features Ecks on psychiatric diagnoses under Myanmar’s military dictatorship; Wong reading an anti-colonial aesthetic politics from a Burmese artist in exile; and Romero Jimenez et al making sense of post-coup Myanmar through Facebook.
See our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.
This week’s New Pubs features Egreteau on hunger strikes and collective memory in Burmese resistance; Deka on Myanmar’s humanitarian catastrophes plural; and Yang on refugees, crime, and methods on the Thai-Burma border.
See our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.
from Deka
April 2025 (5): Special Issue on “Weaknesses of the Sit-tat,” with Tun Myint, Yucca Wai & Joseph Andersson, Chan Min, Aung Myo Htet, Yay Keh, Htun Zaw Myat, Htet Myat, Thet Paing, Naung Yoe, Maw Kun, and Ma Su Thit.
| MRC Dialogue Series 2025 |
| Cross-border infrastructures enabling scamming operations along the Thai–Myanmar border Date: Tuesday 9 September 2025 Time zone: 5.30–6.30pm AEST, 2-3pm MMT, 9.30-10.30am CEST Zoom link here |
The rapid expansion of cyber-scamming operations along the Thai–Myanmar border, particularly in Myawaddy and Shwe Kokko, underscores the role of conflict-affected borderlands in facilitating illicit economies. Rooted in decades of ceasefire capitalism and exacerbated by Myanmar’s post-coup instability, these scam hubs operate within a complex governance framework involving state, non-state, civilian and armed actors. This study examines the infrastructure that has enabled these operations to proliferate, focusing on three key dimensions: the establishment of trade border zones and channels that provide a foundation for informal and illicit activities, the labour and goods market dynamics that sustain the scam industry, and the financial and legal mechanisms that enable large-scale money laundering and law evasion.
By mapping the physical, political, and digital networks that support these activities, this research highlights how border zones can function as enabling environments for organised crime. Extensive field research, interviews, open-source intelligence, and expert analysis are synthesised with the aim of providing a comprehensive understanding of how cyber-scamming operations are structured, financed, and maintained. What follows is an exploration of how local communities and transnational actors contribute to, benefit from but are also impacted and limited by these operations. The findings offer crucial insights for policymakers seeking to disrupt these networks, regulate border economies, and address the socio-economic vulnerabilities that drive participation in illicit industries.
Speaker
Laure Siegel has been working since 2014 in South and Southeast Asia as an independent journalist, researcher and media trainer. She graduated from the Strasbourg University of Journalism at the French-German border. She is a member of Alter-Sea (Observatory for Political Alternatives in Southeast Asia) as well as the ASEAN-China-Norms network led by CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research). She specialises in Thailand and Myanmar political and social landscapes and regularly produces research reports, exhibitions and documentaries on those issues. She founded a storytelling academy for Burmese youth in the aftermath of the 2021 coup.
This week’s New Pubs features Salem-Gervais on local language education amidst conflict and federal aspirations in Myanmar; Aye Lei Tun and Ardeth Thawnghmung with the Myanmar entry in the Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in Southeast Asia; and Moni et al analyzing the proposal of a humanitarian corridor to Rakhine state.
See our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.
Sources: MIMU, SIL, LSDO.
This week’s New Pubs features Buscemi’s book on weapons in Myanmar’s borderlands; Bächtold on Facebook’s work in Myanmar as imperial experimentation; and Faxon on militarization and refugee networks along the India / Burma border.
See our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks, and if anyone wants a PDF but is excluded by pay wall, please email us and we will help if we can.
A new special issue of JoBS, “Histories of Belonging and Identities (Re)Imagined,” edited by Hitomi Fujimura and Alicia Turner (29.1), is out!
It has contributions from Maynadi Kyaw on the Japanese and U Ottama; Kazuto Ikeda on Karen and the Thakins; Fujimora on booze and gender; and Kei Nemoto on shoes and religion.
Burma Studies Group 