In Myanmar, war has persisted for generations, but experiences of war vary immensely, as they depend on local histories, economies, and power relations. I bridge macro- and micro-political approaches to war, showing how both perspectives are important for understanding how colonisation and postcolonial statebuilding shape current experiences of armed violence.

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This was the impetus for the Myanmar Conflict Map, an interactive platform for tracking, visualising, and analysing reports of armed violence in post-coup Myanmar. I developed the Conflict Map with a small team from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. To launch the Conflict Map, I authored a series of essays in 2022. The first essay explained the importance of thinking about post-coup Myanmar as divided into six warscapes. Subsequent essays delved into each warscape in greater detail (Dry Zone, Rakhine, Northeast, Southeast, Northwest).

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New tools are required for bridging macropolitical and micropolitical approaches to war. One tool I have used is warscape biographies, or how subjects narrate their lives as situated within specific times and places of war. People do not experience and think about war only according to pre-defined categories (e.g. ethnicity), but do so out of localised experiences of violence and militarisation. This approach allows us to understand how and why "international" concepts, such as self-determination​, are being rethought. In Karen State, claims to self-determination have emerged out of a desire to preserve specific Indigenous territories where customary practices have not been ravaged by war. So too with people's anxious responses to infrastructure, which are shaped by personal biographies and social histories.

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I spoke about this in a talk, A Country With Many Histories: Myanmar's Diverse Geographies of War and Everyday Life (YouTube, English with Burmese subtitles), for Spring University Myanmar's Institute of Human Rights and Democratic Governance, in September 2023.