Special Webinar: Military dictatorship and citizenship in Myanmar
FRIDAY 26 MARCH 2021 FROM 13:00-14:00 CAT
PLAAS invites you to a special webinar titled ‘Military dictatorship and citizenship in Myanmar’ featuring:
• Sai Sam Kham, Ph.D. Fellow, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Fariba Alamgir, PhD in International Development from the University of Copenhagen and University of East Anglia
• Shapan Adnan, Professor, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
The webinar will be chaired by, Mnqobi Ngubane, Research Assistant, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of Western Cape.
On 1 February 2021, a democratically elected government was toppled by a military coup in Myanmar. This webinar dissects the authoritarian regime and lays bare its destructive implications for citizens, and why this is not only a counter democratic state of affairs, but a threat to democracies of the global South.
This webinar will engage the questions below:
- Is this the death of democracy in Myanmar?
- What are the authoritarian regime’s implications for rural and urban populations?
- What does the current military dictatorship reveal about authoritarian regimes elsewhere in this age of capitalism?
- What can be done by the international community?
Tune in on Friday, 26 March 2021 from:
12:00 West Africa Time (WAT)
13:00 Central Africa Time (CAT)
14:00 East Africa Time (EAT)
About the speakers:
Shapan Adnan is a Professorial Research Associate with the Department of Development Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He has taught at the National University of Singapore and the Universities of Dhaka and Chittagong. He has been a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences (SPS) from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. Honours in Economics from the University of Sussex. His teaching, research and publications are in the fields of political economy, sociology/anthropology and development.
Fariba Alamgir is leading a research project on refugees’ access to mental health services in protracted displacement contexts. The project is funded by the University of Bath under the UKRI-GCRF scheme. She holds a PhD degree in International Development from the University of Copenhagen and University of East Anglia.
Sai Sam Kham is a PhD Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is a member of the “Commodity & Land Rushes and Regimes: Reshaping Five Spheres of Global Social Life (RRUSHES-5)” project led by Professor Jun Borras, and supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant award. As part of this project, Sai Sam is working on the contemporary global commodity/land rushes and how they (re)shape the politics of food, climate change and state-society relations in Myanmar/ Burma. His broad research interests and works are related to agrarian communities, agroecological farming, illicit crops, land and resource governance, climate change, local knowledge, food sovereignty, humanitarian works, conflict and social justice, international Buddhists’ social movements, in Myanmar and Asia regions. He obtained his BSc. degree in Mathematics (in 2003), BSc. in Computer Science (in 2004), in Mandalay, Myanmar, and MSc. in Holistic Science (in 2010) from Schumacher College, Plymouth University, UK. Before joining the RRUSHES-5 project, he has worked with Metta Development Foundation, a national NGO in Myanmar for 16 years.
Mnqobi Ngubane studies land redistribution impacts on social reproduction of subaltern communities in the Global South, and some parts of the Global North, against the backdrop of current crises of social reproduction. This includes key themes on struggles for reproduction of small-scale farming in post land reform contexts, as well as dynamics of immigrant farm workers in contexts characterized by deepened crises of social reproduction. His work intersects black consciousness, and political economy. At home in South Africa his scholarship has been deeply embedded in rural social movements and struggles for land by marginalised black communities, including in his home villages within a broader decolonization project embarked upon by his country’s young democracy. He is also part of a Global-South movement of young scholar-activists, the Collective of Agrarian Scholar- Activists from the South https://casasouth.org which convenes scholar activists from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. His broader scholarly, and activist interests include decolonization, free education, feminisation of social movements and social justice.
Listen to this pre-webinar podcast: https://audioboom.com/posts/7822613-myanmar-s-fight-for-democracy-in-conversation-with-sai-sam-kham
Watch the webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFHndgZviKI Or scroll down to view it.
