Postcolonial Borderlands
I question the idea that the borders of nation-states map onto the boundaries of social and political lives. I am interested not only in how individuals live across borders, but how people form communities in the margins of postcolonial states.
I have written about migrant lives and the Myanmar-Thailand borderland during Myanmar's "transition". I also write about how borders allow community-based organizations to challenge the violence of postcolonial state-building and limits of doing so.
Aid and Development Politics
Millions are channelled into "good governance" programmes in the Global South each year. Yet what makes governance "good" is fraught in postcolonial states, where non-state actors act like a state and contest its authority.
I study how foreign aid intersects with postcolonial statebuilding, often from an ethnographic approach. For example, in Karen State, Myanmar, people have used foreign aid creatively, to contest the local legacies of postcolonial statebuilding. Yet this requires that they tack between the technical world of international development and imaginative efforts to reimagine peace and territory.
War and Warscapes
In Myanmar, war has lasted for generations, but experiences of war vary immensely, depending on local social relations. Bridging macro- and micro-political approaches to war helps grasp how colonial and postcolonial histories shape ongoing violence.
I write about how people do not experience and think about war through pre-defined categories (e.g. ethnicity), but out of local experiences of violence. This shapes their views on self-determination, infrastructure, and territory.
I also co-developed the Myanmar Conflict Map, and have written essays about "warscapes" and humanitarian issues in post-coup Myanmar.
Applied and Policy Research
Between 2023 and 2024, I was Associate Fellow with the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), where I worked on the Myanmar Conflict Map. My co-authored book, New Answers to Old Questions: Myanmar Before and After the 2021 Coup d'etat (with Aaron Connelly), explains how Myanmar is shaped by three relationships - between military and state, centre and periphery, and Myanmar and the world - for a generalist audience.
For various organisations, I have done or contributed to research on conflict; land; gender; and digital cultures. These organisations have been based in many countries, including Canada, Germany, Myanmar, the US, and the UK.
Please follow these links for my reports and commentaries.
