Ask a Professor! Ep. 3: The Political Crisis and Coup in Myanmar, with Professor Ingrid Jordt is now available to stream on our new videos page www.uwm.edu/anthropology/videos or simply click on the video link below!

Hello everyone, welcome to Ask a Professor! A UWM Anthropology web series where we ask professors questions about everything.

On February 1st of 2021, the democratically elected leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and members of her National League for Democracy were detained by force by the leader of the Myanmar military, Min Aung Hlaing. Since then, many people have been arrested, hurt or killed while protesting the actions of the military and the situation continues to worsen without a clear path to peace.

In this episode I hope to shed some light on the situation with the help of Dr. Ingrid Jordt, an expert in Myanmar politics. Dr. Jordt has conducted research in Myanmar since 1988. Her research interests include processes of political legitimation, lay/monastic relations in Buddhist Burma, Buddhist meditation movements in Southeast Asia and ethnographic methods and social theory. She has written several articles on the subject of Burma’s political and cultural landscape and her most recent article in the University of Notre Dame publication, Contending Modernities, expertly contextualizes the complexities of the ongoing political crisis.

For a more in-depth analysis of the situation, please follow the link below to Professor Jordt’s most recent publication, “How Generation Z Galvanized a Revolutionary Movement against Myanmar’s 2021 Military Coup.” https://www.iseas.edu.sg/category/articles-commentaries/trends-in-southeast-asia/trends-in-southeast-asia-2021/