Emotion, Care, and Common Concerns: A Relational Approach to Research in Contested Southeast Asian Borderlands

This workshop explores how emotion, care, and common concerns shape the practice of research in contested Southeast Asian borderlands. Moving beyond conventional discussions of access, risk, and method, it asks how a more relational approach to the field can help us better understand the human dimensions of research in contexts marked by precarity, violence, mobility, and political uncertainty.

Focusing on Southeast Asia, with Myanmar as a central case, the workshop also brings neighbouring settings and other hostile contexts into conversation, including those shaped by conflict, displacement, and cross-border entanglements. It reflects on how researchers build relationships, navigate emotional and ethical demands, and respond to the ordinary yet significant concerns that emerge through fieldwork, ethnographic engagement, and historical inquiry.

In doing so, the workshop opens up a conversation about care not simply as a personal matter, but as a methodological and intellectual question central to knowledge production in difficult field settings. This event forms part of the workshop series on female scholars in hostile and conflict contexts funded by SOAS Research Culture. 

Speakers and discussants

Tharaphi Than (Northern Illinois University) — Associate Professor specialising in Myanmar studies, feminism and social movements.

Khin Khin Mra (University of Manchester) — PhD candidate researching gender, governance, and institutional change in Myanmar

Fred Lai (London School of Economics and Political Science) — LSE Fellow in Anthropology researching ageing, dementia care, and welfare governance across Asian contexts

Yi Li (Aberystwyth University) — Lecturer in East and South East Asian History researching migration and diaspora in Myanmar and Southeast Asia

Moderator

Xu Peng (University of Manchester & SOAS University of London) — Research fellow working on conflict and illicit economy in Southeast Asia

Registration

This event is free to attend, open to the public, and held in-person only.

Hosted by the SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies.