This week’s New Pubs features Hue on Burmese art (and life) in diaspora; Islam on calling the Rohingya “kalar”; and Han and Khemanitthathai on security cooperation among Myanmar and Thailand.

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 Frydenlund rethinking surplus populations via Rohingya in KL; Ye Phone Kyaw on which name, Myanmar or Burma, best represents indigenous linguistic practices; and Courtin et al find associational evidence in Burma linking poverty to anti-Muslim prejudice.

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: internet

Crouch, Melissa. The Palimpsest Constitution The Social Life of Constitutions in Myanmar. Oxford University Press, 2025.

Since the mid-20th century, many former postcolonial states have engaged in multiple constitution-making exercises, with the turnover in written constitutions often due to coups or internal conflict. Conversely, people have resisted authoritarian rule through alternative constitution-making. The reality that most countries have had numerous official and unofficial constitutional texts begs the question: How do past constitutions matter in the present? This volume explores the social life of constitutions, or how past constitutions matter. Using the case of Myanmar, Crouch demonstrates that constitutions are a palimpsest of past texts, ideas, and practices, an accumulation of contested legacies. Through constitutional ethnography, she traces Myanmar’s modern constitutional history from the late colonial era through its postcolonial, socialist, and military regimes. The Palimpsest Constitution captures the idea that contemporary debates about constitutional reform are informed by the contested legacies of the past. Today, the military insists on the endurance of its 2008 Constitution while pro-civilian actors resist military rule through alternative constitution-making endeavours. Offering a sociological view of constitutional endurance, the book demonstrates how the social life of contested constitutional legacies are central to the struggle for constitutional democracy and civilian rule in Myanmar.

And see here for all of the books that don’t exist yet

This week’s New Pubs features Rhoads on how displacement is impacting Myanmar citizenship; Lynn Thar Yar and Jefferson on lawyering under post-coup Myanmar’s authoritarian regime; and Hedström’s book Reproducing Revolution, on the Kachin struggle, is out and open access.

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.

see here for more information about a one-year Postdoctoral Fellowship for a Myanmar researcher at the ANU: https://jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/postdoctoral-fellow-canberra-act-act-australia-68d78b43-f03f-4fd9-b66e-a78b084e59c9

The position is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government, as part of the “Advancing Research and Dialogue on Political, Social and Economic Conditions in Myanmar” project, through the Myanmar Research Centre. The position is based in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. 

This is a research-only postdoc. There are no teaching responsibilities. It will run, subject to visa approval process, for the calendar year of 2026. There is some flexibility on the starting month. 

To be eligible, you must be a Myanmar national who has completed a PhD within the last five years on the political, social or economic conditions of present-day Myanmar, in any discipline. Applicants who have not previously held a postdoctoral position will be preferred.

If you have any questions about the position that are not answered through the information on the website and in the application form then you can direct them to me at my ANU email address. 

This week’s New Pubs features Filipowicz on the commons, magic, and resistance; Kakati on headhunters in zomia from 1944 to 1964; and Putri with an entry on the Rohingya in the Routledge handbook of human rights in Southeast Asia.

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.

collage of magic/resistance photos (source: BSG’s stenographer)

This week’s New Pubs features Chan on whether BRI public engagement is substantive or just for show; Bu and Matelski on the long-distance activism of Burmese in the Netherlands; and Zreik on how Burmese (and Laotians) activists are managing digital authoritarianism.

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 Chiu on small-scale land speculation and displacement in peri-urban Myanmar; Buscemi on the political geographies of community in Karreni state warscapes; and a volume, edited by Uddin, on reshaping Rohingya futures.

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 Wasserstrom’s short book on the Milk Tea Alliance, featuring Burmese activist Nickey Diamond; Loong on the Thai-Burma borderland as a frontier space; and Venker et al on fishing practices of Myanmar refugees in upstate New York.

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.