Research Interests：

1. Religion and Ethnicity among Minorities in Thailand and Myanmar Upland-Lowland Relationship in Mainland Southeast Asia Gender, Family and Social Change in Southeast Asia

Research Overview：

My research interests have evolved since I began research among the Karen in the Northern Thai hills two decades ago on religion, ethnicity and gender. Changes in my orientation, in the discipline of anthropology and in the region itself have constantly demanded me to reframe my understanding. My focus has gradually widened spatially and temporally from the time of Burma’s colonization and Thailand’s modern nation-building to national policies under the Cold War, and subsequently in the age of globalization, how have the everyday life of the people in the region been transformed? I have also been conducting research on both sides of the Thai-Burma border, looking at religious practices among the Karen since colonial times. I am pursuing two major topics across the Thailand-Myanmar border: the ethno-religious movements among the Karen; and the domestic sphere as a locus of cultural reproduction amid experiences of ethnic conflict as well as cross-border mobility for labor and refuge. Through these topics, have attempted to reconsider modernist frameworks for “family,” “ethnicity” and “religion. More recently, however, I have also turned from looking at minority ethnic groups specifically as my subject, to foregrounding the changes in the wider region and locating the minorities within a larger picture. In this effort, I have only recently launched research on the changing intimate sphere in Southeast Asia and the topic of care, looking at both institutional as well as on-the-ground practice of care, towards a more comprehensive, wider and deeper understanding of the region.

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