Sara is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at LSE who researches at the intersection of international politics and visual culture. Her research explores the relationship between aesthetics, creative practice and transnational resistance, with a focus on Myanmar’s diaspora. Sara utilises a participatory and practice-based research methodology, which leverages (auto)ethnography and curation as method. Theoretically, her work critically engages with the aesthetic turn in IR through anticolonial surrealist thought.

Sara holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota and an MSc in Development Studies (with Distinction) from SOAS, University of London. Previously, Sara worked on a variety of international research projects, utilising arts-based methods to explore experiences of conflict, humanitarian crisis, migration and displacement. Her doctoral research is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s LAHP Doctoral Training Partnership. Sara served as Deputy Editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol 52.

Research topic

Aesthetic resistance & surrealist praxis in/beyond Myanmar

Teaching experience

• POL113: Politics in Action (QMUL)
• IR200: International Political Theory (LSE)
• ME305: Qualitative Field Methods (LSE Summer School)

Academic supervisor

Professor William A Callahan

Dr Holly Eva Ryan (QMUL)

Research Cluster affiliation

Theory/Area/History Research Cluster