Feminist Research


Southeast Asia Research Dialogues

This was our first event in the SEA Research Dialogue series. This event used a hybrid format to host a virtual panel and brought together a community of researchers and practitioners in Mae Sot and Chiang Mai for in-person discussions. The panelists are researchers who employ a feminist methodology or conduct/support research as part of their work to empower girls and/or women. The panelists were a mixed between academic researchers and practitioners. The online panel was moderated by the Tea Leaf Center’s director Aileen Thomson.


Our presenters in order of appearance:

Phoebe Rebel graduated in 2016 with B.A (Hons) in Communication from Lancaster University, she works as both a communication specialist and women activist dedicating to the advancement of women’s life through her expertise. Her experience includes raising awareness and advocacy, supporting survivors in case management, providing empowerment and sexuality workshops, and women’s economic empowerment. She believes in the power of strategic and creative communications as they can help change people minds and behaviors, especially in the means of achieving gender equality. Currently, she is a research fellow at Chiang Mai University, doing research about women in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution. Though she moved to Thailand, she keeps working with women on the ground to help enhance their security and needs under the cruelty of military regime.


Khin Yadanar studied law at West University of Yangon from 2002-2007, and attended Minmahaw Education Foundation at Mae Sot for the GED program in 2008-2009. She won a scholarship to study at Asian University for Women for my Bachelor Degree from 2009-2014. Then she started to work for development fields in Myanmar, including work for Medical Action Myanmar and as a consultant for Save the Children-International. With Save the Children, she was involved in the Program Design team, and worked on the Challenging Urban Poverty Program. From then onwards, she became a researcher as her full-time career. From 2020 till present, she has been doing quite a lot of both quantitative and qualitative research about adolescent girls’ lives in Myanmar. 


Kriangsak Teerakowitkajorn, Ph.D. is the founder and Managing Director of the Just Economy and Labor Institute (JELI), a labor justice organization with which he has led a series of action research on platform workers since 2017. His recent research is “Centering the agency of women in Thailand’s platform-based care economy (2022)”, funded by International Development Research Center in Canada. Holding a Ph.D. in Labour Geographies from Syracuse University, Kriangsak served as a research consultant for several international organizations including the ILO and  Oxfam. In the past decade, Kriangsak has worked extensively with labor movements in Thailand and Southeast Asia. He is also a co-producer and co-host of the Asian Labor Review podcast, The Content of Resistance, highlighting labor struggles and resistance across Asia.


Dr. Elizabeth Imti has a Ph.D in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She worked as an Assistant Professor in India before joining AIPP last year, and also worked as a research assistant at the University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.