10/ And although the international aid landscape has changed dramatically since 2021, I hope this paper still prompts reflection on how international interventions shape uneven political geographies well beyond Myanmar. @devandchg.bsky.social #WhatsHappeninginMyanmar #foreignaid
9/ Shared with gratitude to all who have contributed to this paper - as conversation partners and participants, colleagues, and otherwise. All errors remain my own.
8/ Third: margins - despite being sites of state violence - were integral to border organisations' work.
I conceptualise border organisations as leveraging and seeking to expand the Thai-Myanmar borderworld: interlinked & interstitial spaces blurring the boundary between state/non-state.
7/ Second: donors and border organisations were pursuing different political projects.
Donors wanted to reform governments; border organisations resisted post-colonial statebuilding itself.
6/ First: aid disbursed under the good governance agenda is embedded in contested centre-margin relations - a dynamic central to post-colonial statebuilding.
I highlight how this dialectical relationship shapes the outcomes of foreign aid.
5/ I consider what their concerns might say about the relationship between aid and post-colonial statebuilding.
I make three main contributions to critical development studies & political geography.
4/ While donors backed a change in the central government, border organisations saw that violent and contested processes of post-colonial statebuilding were persisting in a new guise.
From a relational, interpretivist perspective, this paper takes the concerns of border organisations seriously.
3/ Border organisations had operated from across the border for decades. They did not trust the military's promises to stay out of politics and to bring peace. Many donors grew frustrated; thinking border organisations to be stubborn and backward-looking.
2/ Between 2012-2021, Myanmar's "transition", unprecedented amounts of aid $ flowed into Yangon & Naypyidaw.
Many border organisations felt sidelined - organisations that had operated for decades in conflict areas from across the Thai border.
1/ Foreign aid has often been promoted as tool to promote good governance and strengthen civil society. But it can also reinforce the uneven geographies of post-colonial statebuilding.
🧵 New paper in Development & Change: a paper on foreign aid, civil society & post-colonial statebuilding in southeast Myanmar.
Open-access here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
6/ Shared with lots of gratitude to the organisations and people who allowed me to join them and learn from them.
I hope this piece contributes to ongoing conversations about ethics, care, and decoloniality in research, in Myanmar and beyond.
5/ This happened in two ways:
Everyday listening - day-to-day encounters unsettled my preconceptions about coloniality and violence in Myanmar.
Solidarity - I understood solidarity not as something I could define, but as already being built (i.e. "solidarity with" vs. "solidarity between").
4/ I propose that volunteering didn't help me escape colonial or neo-colonial relations shaping both research and the aid industry. But it required me to sit with them and opened up incomplete and ambivalent ways to challenge these systems.
3/ I reflect on what volunteering can/cannot offer to decolonial approaches to conflict and violence.
It draws from time with Karen community-based organisations in my PhD. I revisited my research diary, reminding me what I'd learned and unlearned - and that I still have a long way to go.
2/ Part of a Special Issue on "Decolonising Research Ethics", edited by @drvanessalamb.bsky.social, @zalifung.bsky.social, Sophia Htwe & Anne Décobert, and with many other contributions still to come. Thank you for having me.
1/ ✍️ A new article that has been a little scary to put out into the world: "Volunteering while researching conflict and violence: reflections on listening, solidarity, and decoloniality in Myanmar's borderlands".
Open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
New Year's READ: Volunteering While Researching Conflict and Violence by @shonaloong.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Excited that this is part of our special issue on #Decolonising Research #Ethics in Asia Pacific Viewpoint (w/Anne Décobert, Sophia Htwe + @zalifung.bsky.social)
Screenshot of the journal abstract. Click the link to learn more.
Literature on nonstate territories often foregrounds grassroots actors that resist militarization and violence. @shonaloong.bsky.social discusses that armed struggle may be necessary in the resistance to #postcolonial state building, focusing on the KNU-controlled Salween Peace Park. buff.ly/7aayJxx
This morning at @rgsibg.bsky.social conference: two hybrid sessions on the Political Geographies of Foreign Aid
🕘 09:00–10:40 & 10:55–12:50 BST
📍 Alan Walters Bldg, Rm 223
Co-convened by Emma Mawdsley & Paul Gilbert
Sponsored by @polgrg.bsky.social & @devgeogsrg.bsky.social
8/ We hope this piece resonates and highlights ongoing efforts to shift knowledge politics in Myanmar, as part of longer struggles over centre-periphery relations.
Read it here: 👉 teacirclemyanmar.com/education/pr...
#Myanmar #WhatsHappeninginMyanmar
7/ This article emerges from a roundtable we co-organised at the 2024 Myanmar Borderlands Conference at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
We hoped to encourage conversations about how knowledge is produced about Myanmar’s margins, and by whom.
6/ The coup closed & opened space for borderland knowledge.
While some must keep research unpublished to stay safe, new education platforms rethink pedagogy, build networks, and include students from across Myanmar.
We call for active support, mentorship & resources.
5/ Borderland knowledge production is also shaped by socio-political realities, incl. security threats from both states, ethnic self-determination movements, & aid dynamics.
Still, borderland researchers have unique advantages, e.g. languages, access to cross-border resources.
4/ We highlight challenges that face borderland knowledge producers seeking to resist state-centric narratives, such as:
🧠Under-resourced education institutions
🧠 Language and access barriers
🧠 Uneven donor dynamics
🧠 Conflict and displacement
3/ Myanmar’s borderlands have long been cast as marginal, violent, or primitive – narratives often used to justify state violence.
But they have also produced knowledge that facilitates resistance, shaped by generations of local educators, activists, & researchers.
2/ The 2021 coup sparked debates about the politics of knowledge in Myanmar, as research shapes international responses to the Spring Revolution.
We ask: Who produces and transmits knowledge about Myanmar’s borderlands, and under what conditions.
1/ 📖 For Tea Circle, we reflect on the politics of producing knowledge in/of/for Myanmar’s borderlands after the 2021 coup.
With co-authors: Anders K. Moeller, Radka Antalikova, Dan Seng Lawn, Peter Suante - each involved in non-state research/education work.
🔗 teacirclemyanmar.com/education/pr...
Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) are key actors in Myanmar's revolutionary war. But their positioning towards the crisis has been far from clear. How do we make sense of their strategies?
I hope to shed some light on this with my new open access article: doi.org/10.1080/0047...
Some takeaways🧵1/8
For World Press Freedom Day, we'd like to share: Journalists from Shan State-based news outlets Shwe Phee Myay continue their work amid civil war, military repression, & challenges linked to USAID funding.
By @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social and Me
www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/...
