Tun Myint and Jackson Bahn ’16 begin research in Myanmar

In December 2013, Professor Tun Myint (Political Science) and his Student Research Assistant Jackson Bahn ’16 traveled to Myanmar (Burma) for 20 days in order to begin research on a public memory project on the era of student protests and unrest in the 1980s. For Professor Myint, the experience of fieldwork with a student was immensely beneficial because it allowed him to reflect with the student on their personal encounters with Burmese culture, artifacts and history.

Professor Myint believes that bringing interested and engaged students abroad allows a professor or researcher to have the “audience as a researcher right there,” which is helpful for playing out research hypotheses and having conversations about the changing nature of their research question and goals. Along with their archival research and oral interviews, Professor Myint and Jackson visited schools in order to further inform their understanding of public life as taught through school curricula, demonstrating “whose stories are taught and recorded” and discovering “how public memory is side-lined in the curriculum.”

Following the success of this winter break trip, Professor Myint hopes to continue providing students with the opportunity to engage in fieldwork and experience and help him to answer the question: “What is happening with current public memory in everyday life in Burma?”

“More so than would ever be possible through an off-site experience, I was able to pursue follow-up investigations and my own intellectual curiosity to get much closer to a true picture of the life, politics, economy, ecology, and culture of Burma.”

– Jackson Bahn ’16

This project was made possible through a generous gift by Alison von Klemperer ’82 in honor of Professor Diethelm Prowe.