Register now to secure your place!
We are pleased to announce the 2026 Myanmar Update - Contours of a New Myanmar. The Update will be held on Friday, 24 July and Saturday, 25 July 2026 at the Australian National University in Canberra.
The conference is convened by the ANU Myanmar Research Centre in the College of Asia and the Pacific, and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales Canberra.
The conference will explore the social, political, economic, technological, and international changes wrought by the 2021 military coup in Myanmar and the subsequent countrywide resistance to military rule, and consider how these changes are likely to shape a post-conflict Myanmar.
This is an opportunity to explicate and celebrate the revolutionary changes brought about by the Myanmar people’s resistance to military rule, while also reckoning with more problematic aspects of the five-year long civil war.
The program and speaker details have been updated on this site. Please register to secure your place!
This is an in-person only event.
Myanmar Update 2026 Convenors
- Prof Bina D’Costa – Board Member, Myanmar Research Centre, ANU; CEVAW Chief Investigator and ANU Node lead on migration and trafficking. bina.dcosta@anu.edu.au
- Dr Morten Pedersen – Policy director, Myanmar Research Centre, ANU; Senior Lecturer in International Politics, UNSW Canberra. Morten.Pedersen@unsw.edu.au
PLEASE NOTE:
Free of charge
- Morning tea and afternoon tea (24 & 25 July 2026)
- Conference reception (24 July)
- Lunch for speakers, chairs and organisers (24 & 25 July 2026)
Fees for general participants
- Conference lunch (24 & 25 July) is proudly provided by the Australia Mon Association in Canberra. Lunch will be available for $10 per participant per meal. Bottled water can be purchased for $2 per bottle, and soft drinks for $3 per bottle.
Program
Day 1 (Friday 24 July)
Venue: Auditorium, Australia Centre on China in the World Building 188, Fellows Lane, ANU
8.30-9am Arrival and registration
9-9.30am Welcome
- Professor Bina D'Costa, Board Member, Myanmar Research Centre, ANU and CEVAW Chief Investigator
- Paul Girrawah House, First Nations Portfolio - Welcome to the Country
- Professor Helen Sullivan, Dean, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
- Kate Smith, Acting First Secretary of the Southeast Asia Regional and Mainland Division, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
9.30-10.15am Opening Address
- Andrew Selth, Adjunct Professor, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University - From obscurity to notoriety: Fifty years of Myanmar (Burma) Studies
10.15-10.30am Morning tea
10.30am-1pm Keynote speakers
- Nyantha Maw Lin, Founder, Anagat Initiatives
- Kyaw Saw Han, Independent peace and conflict expert
- Yun Sun, Director of China Program, The Stimson Center (via Zoom)
- Jared Bissinger, Visiting Fellow with the Myanmar Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Research Lead at Catalyst Economics (via Zoom)
1-2pm Lunch break
2-3.15pm Panel on "Wartime politics"
- Tian Zhang, Associate Professor, Sun Yat-sen University - Depolitisation and party politics during Myanmar’s transitional decline
- Swe Oo Mon, Postdoctoral Fellow, Australian National University - Peer influence and voting under perceived illegitimacy: A pre-election experiment in Myanmar
- Soe Htet, PhD candidate, University of Melbourne - Federalisation from below? Examining power dynamics, stakeholder contestation, and coalition politics in the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC)
- Debbie Stothard and Su Lai, ALTSEAN/CEVAW Partners - The Inclusive Federal Economic Policy Project: A Blueprint for Development from the Grassroots
3.15-3.30pm Afternoon tea
3.30-5pm Panel on ‘‘'The Chinese border’: conflict, crime, and underdevelopment”
- Tamas Wells and Zaw Naw, University of Melbourne - Stabilising China-Myanmar borderworlds?: the role of scam centres and humanitarian NGOs
- Zhengxin Huang, MPhil candidate, Oxford University, UK - Governing through others: How Myanmar's military regime instrumentalises great powers' cross-border governance for regime legitimacy
- D Moon Aung, PhD candidate, Chiang Mai University, Thailand - Fragmented authority and the accountability gap: gold mining governance in post-coup Kachin state
- Lanung Tu Kumbun, PhD candidate, University of Hyderabad, India - Myanmar’s rare earth minerals: The geopolitical competition between China and India
5-6pm Conference reception and book launch
During the conference reception, the following two books will be launched:
- Cecile Medail, Samuel Hmung, and Morten B. Pedersen (eds), Myanmar Rises: The Spring Revolution (ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, 2026 forthcoming)
- Melissa Crouch, The Palimpsest Constitution: The Social Life of Constitutions in Myanmar (Oxford University Press, 2025)
Venue: Auditorium Foyer, Australia Centre on China in the World Building 188, Fellows Lane, ANU
Day 2 (Saturday 25 July)
Venue: Auditorium, Australia Centre on China in the World Building 188, Fellows Lane, ANU
9-10.30am Panel on “Resistance, local governance and proto state building”
- Jesua Lynn, Research Fellow, Chiang Mai University, Thailand - Two paths to governance from below: Governance-building trajectories in post-coup Sagaing and Karenni (via pre-recorded video)
- Tony Neil, Senior Project Collaborator, D-GESS, ETH Zurich - Reforming Kawthoolei: Governance repertoires of the Spring Revolution (via pre-recorded video)
- Sophia Htwe, PhD candidate, University of Melbourne - Vernacular legitimacy: Community judgements of armed substance governance in post-coup Rakhine state
- Khaing Min Thant, PhD candidate, UNSW Canberra - Navigating the nexus of Rebel Natural Resource Governance (RNRG), legitimacy and state building: Pathways for Myanmar contested political orders
10.30-10.45am Morning tea
10.45am-12.15pm Panel on "Sustaining public services in the midst of civil war"
- Nick Cheesman, Associate Professor, Australian National University/CEVAW Associate Investigator and Ma Hnin Win Aung - National Unity Government (NUG) use of law and courts
- Tun Aung Shwe, PhD candidate, UNSW Sydney - Communal disputes and the remaking of local governance in post-coup Myanmar
- Maw Maw Tun, Lecturer in Burmese, Australian National University - The role of ethnic institutions in higher education
- Vanessa Johanson and Saw Ku Moo, Peace, conflict, and governance specialists - Building a decentralised health system
12.15-1pm Lunch break
1-2.15pm Panel on “Beyond survival: Humanitarianism, rights and justice in Myanmar’s revolution”
- Phyu Phyu Oo, Research Fellow, CEVAW, Griffith University - Can the non-state armed groups protect? Conflict-related sexual violence in Myanmar
- Amporn Marddent, Associate Professor, Thammasat University, Thailand/CEVAW Partner Investigator and Zoe Bell, Research Fellow, CEVAW, Australian National University - Multidirectional oppression in Post-Coup Myanmar: Accounts from Rohingya women in displacement
- Aye Aye Aung, Visiting Fellow, ANU Myanmar Research Centre - Technology-facilitated violence and resistance experienced by Myanmar women scholars in exile
2.15-2.30pm Afternoon tea
2.30-4pm Panel on “International engagement”
- Nicholas Coppel, Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne - ASEAN ‘interference’ in Myanmar’s ‘internal’ affairs?
- Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw, Lecturer, University of Hong Kong - Behind closed doors: SDG regression, grassroots resistance in Myanmar, and ASEAN's structural paralysis
- Alec Gray, Former manager, UNHCR, North-west Myanmar - Distributing humanitarian aid under the State Administration Council
- Shannen Ann Enriquez, International peace and development specialist - Localisation under austerity: Rethinking the international aid architecture in Myanmar’s revolution
Sponsors
The 2026 Myanmar Update is supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific; and The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW Project # CE230100004).
