Spotlight on...

SEAC Visiting Fellow

Introducing SEAC Visiting Fellow Dr. Tharaphi Than, a historian and interdisciplinary scholar whose research weaves together feminism, social movements, and print media.

Her recent work includes two edited volumes featuring practitioners’ narratives through a feminist lens. She currently works as an Associate Professor at Northern Illinois University and volunteers with the Virtual Federal University, providing alternative education opportunities for students in Myanmar.

Rice, after all, is always at the backdrop, and it's about time to get to know about its histories, trajectories, and social lives surrounding it up close.

What will you be working on during your time as a SEAC Visiting Fellow?

I will be working on rice riots of Burma/Myanmar in the 1960s in the context of how the state translate socialist meanings through rice, control the mass, and how farmers resist and negotiate with the state through rice.

What led you to your field of study, or what inspired your interest in these topics?

While researching social movements, I stumbled upon archives on rice riots of 1960s and reading through them intrigued me. Personally, I came from a family of rice millers and remembered seeing sampans arriving at my dad's rice mill in Yangon in the 1980s. Rice, after all, is always at the backdrop, and it's about time to get to know about its histories, trajectories, and social lives surrounding it up close.

How do you like to relax and unwind?

Looking at cat pictures and dissecting which Instagram animal videos are AI or not with her daughter.