Insight Myanmar

Episode #470: This episode of Insight Myanmar continues our three-part series covering the Decolonizing Southeast Asian Studies Conference at Chiang Mai University, bringing together voices exploring how colonial legacies still shape knowledge, identity, and power in the region. Thai scholar-activist Thiti Jamkajornkeiat argues that true decolonization requires more than inclusion—it demands struc...

Episode #469: “This is not simply about solving the conflict, but about understanding the conflict to begin with,” explains Bhanubhatra “Kaan” Jittiang, an assistant professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University and director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Conflict Resolution and Human Security. He argues that most external efforts to mediate or manage Myanmar’s conflict fail because...

Episode #468: Friedgard Lottermoser, born in Berlin in 1942, first came to Burma in 1959 when her stepfather was sent there on contract. What began as an expatriate posting soon turned into a lifelong spiritual journey, as she became one of the very few Westerners to study closely with the renowned meditation master Sayagyi U Ba Khin at the International Meditation Center (IMC) in Rangoon. At IMC,...

Episode #467: “We still believe that engaging is more useful than not engaging,” says Kiat Sittheeamorn , former Thai Deputy Prime Minister and international trade negotiator. In this discussion, Kiat draws on decades of experience in engineering, business, and international diplomacy to reflect on the tough moral and practical choices facing Southeast Asia today. Kiat’s approach to public service...

Episode #466: Jonathan Moss, a Free Burma Rangers (FBR) volunteer and former U.S. Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, speaks on the topic of landmines. He notes that the Burma Army routinely employs these devices around military camps, along roads and trails, and in villages. After the military takes a village, often accompanied by widespread looting and arson, it routinely seeds the ground with...

Episode #465: In a rich discussion on Buddhist manuscript cultures in Southeast Asia, Professor Volker Grabowsky and Dr. Silpsupa Jaengsawang explore how handwritten texts—especially those on palm leaf and mulberry paper—carry spiritual, cultural, and scholarly significance. They distinguish literature from manuscript study, which emphasizes the importance of materials, format and scribal context...

Episode #464: Dr. Tun Aung Shwe, a researcher, former public health practitioner, political activist, and National Unity Government representative to Australia discusses Myanmar’s proliferating scam centers, calling them a symptom of a far deeper political and economic system rooted in decades of military rule. He explains that they began as small, family-run operations in northeastern Shan, opera...

Episode #463: “You know, I’m not a superwoman or anything, but at least I can do what I can do,” says Moe Thae Say with quiet conviction. Once a creative director and successful entrepreneur in Yangon’s digital and design scene, she lived comfortably, surrounded by friends who continued their middle-class lives even after the coup. But when Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021, Moe Thae Say cou...

Episode #462: Dulyapak Preecharush, an associate professor of Southeast Asian studies and comparative political scientist specializing in Myanmar, argues that Myanmar’s post-independence political trajectory is best understood as a deliberately managed hybrid political system rather than a failed democratic transition. Drawing on his long-term research, he explains that this system combines limite...

Episode #461: “I think this time, there is even more hope for a fundamental shift and change in [Myanmar],” says Gus Miclat, co-founder of Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID). He contrasts today’s Myanmar resistance with earlier elite-led struggles, seeing in it the potential for “a more systemic change.” Miclat traces his activism to high school protests in the Philippines, sharpened dur...

Episode #460: “This is not only my interest—it is also my duty,” says Khay, a research fellow in Berlin, describing his work to better understand Myanmar’s crises. Raised in Karen State during an era of conflict, Khay became inspired by a sense of ethnic pride and a responsibility as a university student, causing him to shift his interest from engineering to political research, a path that eventua...

Episode #459: This is the third episode in a three-part series that emerged from a three-day Digital Storytelling Workshop hosted by Insight Myanmar Podcast, with support from ANU and IDRC. What began as a room of strangers slowly became a community through the simple act of sharing stories. We were reminded that communication is not just the exchange of information, but the creation of a shared e...

Episode #458: Lilianne Fan is a long-time Myanmar analyst and advocate who served as an adviser to the ASEAN Special Envoy on Myanmar and as part of Malaysia’s advisory group during its ASEAN chairmanship. Drawing on that insider role, she argues that ASEAN’s response to the 2021 coup must be judged by how ASEAN actually functions, not by expectations of decisive moral intervention. Fan explains t...

Episode #457: Brang Min, a Kachin State civil society organizer and student activist with the Kachin State Civil Movement; Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a leading organizer and deputy director of the Anti-Sham Election Campaign Committee representing the General Strike movement; and Aung Moe Zaw, a veteran democracy activist associated with the Democratic Party for a New Society, discuss the upcoming electi...

Episode #456: “We will not leave them behind,” says Simon Billenness, director of the Campaign for a New Myanmar and a Burma policy advocate with more than three decades of experience lobbying the United States Congress on sanctions policy, congressional appropriations, and accountability for Myanmar’s military. In his second appearance on the podcast, Billenness focuses on the U.S. Department of...

Episode #455: Mon Zin, a Myanmar-born pro-democracy activist based in Sydney, is a founding member of the Global Myanmar Spring Revolution, a network that coordinates Burmese diaspora communities around the globe. GMSR’s advocacy targets sanctions, diplomatic recognition, and the financial lifelines of the junta, particularly revenues from oil and gas. In this conversation, Mon Zin analyzes the up...

Episode #454: In our third episode with U Jāgara, a Canadian monk, he reflects on his journey through decades of meditation practice and teaching, focusing on the adaptation of Burmese meditation traditions to contemporary contexts. Following earlier discussions that explored his formative years and monastic journey, this conversation delves into the figures, methodologies, and insights that have...

Episode #453: Patrick Phongsathorn is a human rights advocate and Fortify Rights advocacy specialist working on Myanmar. Raised near London by a Thai–Irish–South African family, he pairs legal rigor with practical savvy about how ministries, courts, and donors move. After abandoning an early push toward medicine, Patrick rerouted into politics and human rights, studying at SOAS and Sciences Po’s H...

Episode #452: “We still had a lot of ideals… but we had some illusions, so to speak.” François Nosten has spent decades on the Thai-Myanmar border, where war, disease, and displacement overlap endlessly. He arrived in the 1980s, a young doctor from Toulouse with Médecins Sans Frontières, drawn by a sense of purpose. What he found was devastation: malaria sweeping through camps, killing faster than...

Episode #451: Marte Nilsen, senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, joins the podcast to explore Aung San Suu Kyi’s central role in Myanmar’s political life. Drawing on decades of research across Myanmar and Thailand, she also reflects on Norway’s complex engagement with Myanmar—from early solidarity movements and reform-era optimism to today’s challenges of diplomacy, reversals, a...

Episode #450: Over three days, Insight Myanmar led a Digital Storytelling Workshop with academics and activists, where we explored how presence, curiosity, and the simple invitation  “tell me more”  can open real dialogue in a polarized Myanmar. What they created was tender, courageous, and deeply human — conversations that welcome not only each other, but also the un...

Episode #449: The first episode in a five-part series, these discussions were recorded at the 16th International Burma Studies Conference at Northern Illinois University, where scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners gathered for presentations, forums, roundtables, and cultural exhibitions exploring the theme “Dealing with Legacies in Burma.” Amid political turmoil and humanitarian cris...

Episode #448: In the second of our three-part series with Steve Smith, a teacher in the Mahasi tradition, he continues reflecting on his half-century exploration into the country’s spirituality, culture, and politics, while also sharing what he learned from prolonged and intimate contact with some of the greatest meditation teachers and civil leaders of the day.   Steve we...

Episode #447: Maw Shein Win, a Burmese-American poet, teacher, and literary organizer based in the Bay Area, reflects on her creative path, heritage, and commitment to poetry as witness and connection.   Maw Shein Win turned to poetry while in college. She also immersed herself in the punk and experimental music scene of 1980s Los Angeles. This aff...

Episode #446: This episode marks the beginning of a three-part series created during a three-day Digital Storytelling Workshop hosted by the Insight Myanmar Podcast, with support from ANU and IDRC. Over those days, emerging storytellers came together to practice something both ancient and profoundly human: telling stories. In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, the workshop ser...