Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, is the largest city and former capital of Myanmar (Burma). It is home to 7.3 million people. The modern was founded in the seventeenth century around the great Buddhist monument Shwedagon Pagoda.
Yangon
Projects
Team
Anannya Mehtta
Curator-Researcher, Udaipur, Rajasthan
Anannya Mehtta is a curator- researcher based in Udaipur, Rajasthan. After completing her Masters in Political Science from Delhi University in 2004, she went on to study film at PCFE Prague in 2005-2006. As an independent filmmaker she has directed, scripted and produced several short films before joining NDTV as an assistant producer in 2007. Subsequently, Anannya joined the Devi Art Foundation in 2010 where she worked as an assistant curator for five years. In 2012 Anannya was awarded the Curatorial Research Fellowship at the Delfina Foundation, London. The fellowship was supported by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art in partnership with Iniva and the PhD. Programme in Curatorial Knowledge at Goldsmiths College, London. In 2014, Anannya participated in the Asian Curators' Program in Japan supported by the Japan Foundation and worked on a curatorial project as part of the Student Biennale at the Kochi Muzirus Biennale 2014 -2015. She is author of “Towards a new arts Education” in the edited collection ‘India’s Biennale Effect: A politics of Contemporary Art’ edited by Robert E. D Souza and Sunil Manghani published by Routledge. Anannya’s most recent curatorial project included organising and conceptualizing a community fair and an exhibition celebrating 50 years of rural development work for a not for profit called Seva Mandir in Udaipur 2017-2018.
Maitrii Aung-Thwin
Associate Professor of Myanmar/Southeast Asian History
Deputy Director, Asian Research Institute
National University of Singapore
Maitrii Aung-Thwin is Associate Professor of Myanmar/Southeast Asian history and Convener of the Comparative Asian Studies PhD Program at the National University of Singapore. He is also Deputy Director of the Asia Research Institute. His current research is concerned with nation-building, identity, public history, infrastructure, and Buddhist networks in South and Southeast Asia. His publications include: A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations (with Michael Aung-Thwin 2013), The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma (2011) and A New History of Southeast Asia (with Merle Ricklefs et al, 2010). Dr. Aung-Thwin served on the Association of Asian Studies Board of Directors (USA) and he is currently a trustee of the Burma Studies Foundation (USA), and editor of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.
Roger Nelson
Postdoctoral Fellow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Roger Nelson is an art historian and independent curator, and Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research considers images, texts and urban spaces in relation to discourses of modernity and contemporaneity in Southeast Asia. He is co-founding co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, a journal published by NUS Press at the National University of Singapore. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, on ‘Cambodian arts’ of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Roger has contributed essays to scholarly journals including ABE Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe, Stedelijk Studies, and Udaya: Journal of Khmer Studies; specialist art magazines; as well as books and numerous exhibition catalogues. He has curated exhibitions and other projects in Australia, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Roger’s translation of Suon Sorin’s 1961 Khmer nationalist novel, A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land, is forthcoming with NUS Press.
Pen Sereypagna
Director, Vann Molyvann Project, Phnom Penh
Pen Sereypagna is the director of the Vann Molyvann Project and a freelance architect and urban researcher based in Phnom Penh City. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships including the Chevening Scholarship (2017-2018), US/ICOMOS and East West Center (2015-2016), Sa Sa Arts Project (2014-2015), Asian Cultural Council (2012-2013) and the School of Constructed Environments PARSONS as a visiting scholar (2012). Pagna’s work on Genealogy of Urban Form Phnom Penh, Genealogy of Bassac, and Phnom Penh Visions has been the subject of several exhibitions and presentations in Cambodia and selected venues in Asia, Australia, and the U.S. His publications on urban transformation with a focus on Phnom Penh Cambodia, include: Cité De L’architecture & Du Patrimoine (forthcoming 2019), National University of Singapore’s Urban Asias (2018), Chulalongkorn University’s Nakhara journal (2015), and PARSONS’ journal (2014). Pagna received a Bachelor of Architecture and Urbanism from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh and an MA from London Metropolitan University.
Other Sites
Penang
Penang is a separate state of Malaysia and home to 1.7 million people. The old city was founded as a trading post of the English East India Company in the eighteenth century, in the area still known as Georgetown.
Huế
Huế was formerly the royal capital of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam. The present city was founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the city is built on an ancient fort and port of what was once one of the principal cities of Champa.