Australia Myanmar Institute

19/06/2026

Addresses by AMI President Joe Lo Bianco and AMI Special Advisor Christopher Lamb at the 81st Birthday Celebration of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Clayton Hall, 19 June 2026

12/06/2026

Writing in a Time of Conflict: Challenges and Opportunities

This seminar is an online event via Zoom

Date: June 29, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 06:00 - 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time)
02:30-03:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time)

Join Zoom Meeting: please click here https://us06web.zoom.us/s/89666839791?pwd=TJRHeGANEbzglGoVTYnbt8MOiRERcH.1

Meeting ID: 896 6683 9791
Passcode: 522994

Presenter: Ma Thida and Michelle Aung Thin

Description:In this seminar the presenters will explain the role of writing in Myanmar during a period of political repression and armed conflict. The conflict examines how writers, journalists, poets, and intellectuals have responded to censorship, imprisonment, and violence, often using poetry, essays, and digital platforms as forms of resistance and testimony. The discussion considers the decline of cultural infrastructure—including libraries, independent publishers, and literary spaces—and its impact on education, reading cultures, and creative exchange. It also traces shifts from the relative liberalisation of the NLD government to the severe restrictions imposed since February 2021, highlighting changes in publishing, readership, and literary production. Particular attention is given to online and diaspora networks that sustain the circulation of writing across
borders, as well as the role of translation, language, and international readership in bringing Burmese/Myanmar literature to wider global audiences.

Ma Thida is a human rights activist, surgeon and writer who was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for endangering public peace, distributing unlawful literature and having contact with illegal organisations. She was released in 1999 after facing 6 years of harsh conditions. She is currently chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. She continues to speak out about the current difficult environment for freedom of expression and the cases of other writers in prison in Myanmar.

Michelle Aung Thin is an A\ssociate Professor in the School of Media and Communication, teaching in the disciplines of Communication and Creative Writing. Her research spans in cultural history of colonial mixed-race groups such as the Anglo-Burmese, Anglo-Indians, Zerbadi and other Asian diaspora in cosmopolitan Rangoon to contemporary Myanmar literary production. She has taught writing in Mandalay and Yangon and more recently, collaborated with Myanmar artists, writers and translators on creative and academic works. Michelle has been a guest at southeast Asia and Australia’s most prestigious literary festivals and events. Michelle was born in Burma and her personal connection to the region enable her to offer insight into cross-cultural creative practices.

Questions and Answers will follow the presentations.

For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.

27/05/2026

Australia's Immigration Response to Myanmar's Crisis: Policy, Practice and the Case for Reform

Date: May 25, 2026 (Monday)

Presenter: Ko Ko Aung

Description: Since the 2021 military coup, the displacement crisis in Myanmar has placed sustained pressure on Australia's immigration and protection system. Myanmar nationals in Australia, students, skilled workers, family members, and those seeking protection, now navigate a complex set of visa pathways shaped as much by ministerial discretion and shifting policy settings as by the formal legal framework.

Drawing on frontline casework, this seminar examines how Australia's immigration system is responding in practice: where pathways are working, where they are producing prolonged uncertainty, and how outcomes for Myanmar nationals compare with those afforded to other displaced cohorts.

The seminar will then turn to the policy and advocacy landscape, the role of submissions, sector coalitions, and evidence-based engagement with government in shaping more responsive settings, and the contribution that research institutions, practitioners and the diaspora can each make. The aim is to equip attendees with a clearer picture of the current state of play, and to open a discussion about constructive avenues for reform that align with Australia's broader bilateral engagement with Myanmar.

Ko Ko Aung is an Australian-qualified lawyer practising in immigration and refugee law, with a client base spanning Australia and clients from countries across the world. His practice covers protection visa applications, merits review at the Administrative Review Tribunal, ministerial intervention, and family and skilled migration matters, giving him broad, comparative visibility of how Australia's immigration framework operates across very different displacement, family and labour-mobility contexts. Within that broader practice, he has a sustained professional interest in matters connected to Myanmar, and contributes to policy submissions, professional commentary and community legal education on issues affecting the Myanmar diaspora in Australia. He works with community organisations and sector colleagues on initiatives linking individual casework to broader policy settings. His underlying interest is in ensuring that policy debate on Australia's immigration and protection system, including its response to displacement from Myanmar, is informed by evidence drawn from the lived experience of those most directly affected.

Click the link for seminar recording 👇👇👇

This seminar is an online event via ZoomDate: May 25, 2026 (Monda...

06/05/2026

Australia's Immigration Response to Myanmar's Crisis: Policy, Practice and the Case for Reform

This seminar is an online event via Zoom

Date: May 25, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 06:00 - 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time)
02:30-03:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time)
Join Zoom Meeting: please click here https://us06web.zoom.us/s/89666839791?pwd=TJRHeGANEbzglGoVTYnbt8MOiRERcH.1
Meeting ID: 896 6683 9791
Passcode: 522994

Presenter: Ko Ko Aung

Description: Since the 2021 military coup, the displacement crisis in Myanmar has placed sustained pressure on Australia's immigration and protection system. Myanmar nationals in Australia, students, skilled workers, family members, and those seeking protection, now navigate a complex set of visa pathways shaped as much by ministerial discretion and shifting policy settings as by the formal legal framework.

Drawing on frontline casework, this seminar examines how Australia's immigration system is responding in practice: where pathways are working, where they are producing prolonged uncertainty, and how outcomes for Myanmar nationals compare with those afforded to other displaced cohorts.

The seminar will then turn to the policy and advocacy landscape, the role of submissions, sector coalitions, and evidence-based engagement with government in shaping more responsive settings, and the contribution that research institutions, practitioners and the diaspora can each make. The aim is to equip attendees with a clearer picture of the current state of play, and to open a discussion about constructive avenues for reform that align with Australia's broader bilateral engagement with Myanmar.

Ko Ko Aung is an Australian-qualified lawyer practising in immigration and refugee law, with a client base spanning Australia and clients from countries across the world. His practice covers protection visa applications, merits review at the Administrative Review Tribunal, ministerial intervention, and family and skilled migration matters, giving him broad, comparative visibility of how Australia's immigration framework operates across very different displacement, family and labour-mobility contexts. Within that broader practice, he has a sustained professional interest in matters connected to Myanmar, and contributes to policy submissions, professional commentary and community legal education on issues affecting the Myanmar diaspora in Australia. He works with community organisations and sector colleagues on initiatives linking individual casework to broader policy settings. His underlying interest is in ensuring that policy debate on Australia's immigration and protection system, including its response to displacement from Myanmar, is informed by evidence drawn from the lived experience of those most directly affected.

Questions and Answers will follow the presentations.
For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.

14/04/2026

Courageous Journalism: How Myanmar Filmmakers Tell the World the Truth

This seminar is an online event via Zoom

Date: April 27, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 06:00 - 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time)
02:30-03:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time)

Join Zoom Meeting: please click here https://us06web.zoom.us/s/89666839791?pwd=TJRHeGANEbzglGoVTYnbt8MOiRERcH.1

Meeting ID: 896 6683 9791
Passcode: 522994

Presenter: Chan Thiri Soe

Chan is the organiser of the Peacock Film Festival run by the Democratic Voice of Burma, which showcases documentary films focusing on human rights, social justice, and resistance to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. She is in a unique position to discuss the role of films in contemporary Myanmar.

For AMI she will show a short documentary on the organisation of resistance and how ordinary people were propelled to join the Civil Disobedience Movement. After the screening Chan will
discuss how films and filmmaking have come to represent a form of preparation for a possible future civil society in Myanmar. Following the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, many lecturers and students across the country, were among the first to join the Civil Disobedience Movement. They faced severe pressure but took great personal risks and in large numbers, joined armed resistance groups. Some supported grassroots journalism to document the military's crackdown in their communities and several documented these tumultuous times through filming.

On 27 April Chan will be screening “Star (ကြယ်)”, a 15-minute documentary about lecturer Daw Radi Ong who joins the Civil Disobedience Movement and becomes a local journalist. The film
follows Daw Radi Ong’s life in Kalay and remarkable process of how she and her student left their social and professional roles to confront the military and promote revolution. After the screening Chan will describe the voices and stories the film represents and how, despite low budgets and security risks for filmmakers, film has become an important source of communication, organisation, and resistance.

Chan is a Myanmar journalist with over a decade of experience in the media industry and currently serves as Executive Producer of the CJ Shorts Program (Citizen Journalist Short Documentary Program) at Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). She is the founder of DVB Short Documentary Compilations (DSDC), launched in 2022 as a platform to showcase short documentary works. This initiative later evolved into the DVB Peacock Film Festival (DVB PFF) in 2024, which she also founded to nurture and promote emerging Myanmar filmmakers. Her work focuses on human rights, conflict, and social issues in Myanmar, with a strong commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices and bringing international attention to the country’s ongoing crisis. She continues to engage in media and advocacy
efforts to support independent journalism and storytelling.

Star (ကြယ်) (Duration: 15:58)
After the coup, lecturer Daw Radi Ong joins the Civil Disobedience Movement and becomes a local journalist. The film follows her life in Kalay and the story of her
student who joined the revolution.

Questions and Answers will follow the presentations. For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.

08/03/2026

Roots of Arakan

This seminar is an online event via Zoom

Date: March 30, 2026 (Monday)
Time:
06:00 - 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time) 01:30-02:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time) 01:00-02:00 PM (Bangladesh/Dhaka Time)

Join Zoom Meeting: please click here https://us06web.zoom.us/s/89666839791?pwd=TJRHeGANEbzglGoVTYnbt8MOiRERcH.1

Meeting ID: 896 6683 9791
Passcode: 522994

Presenter: Murshid Alam

Murshid Alam has participated in AMI seminars and speaks from the unique position of a young Rohingya. He is a Founder of Rohingya Youth Union-RYU, Director of Roots of Arakan Project, Global Youth Ambassador, NGFP Fellow, and an advocate for refugee rights. Murshid works to strengthen citizen action across borders, in the fields of Global Advocacy, Leadership, Diplomacy, Human Rights and Peacebuilding.

Murshid’s presentation will focus on the The Roots of Arakan project. This initiative brings together a team of young people from both Bangladesh and Myanmar, and includes young
people of Rakhine, Bangladeshi, and Rohingya origin. They are united by a shared vision and work together to support their communities.
The focus of the project is historical preservation, storytelling, and research-based documentation. It is an effort aimed at recording and protecting the diverse narratives of the Rohingya and other peoples of Arakan and the border areas. Their goal is to challenge historical erasure, contribute to justice and reconciliation, and to foster interethnic understanding through rigorous research, oral histories, cultural archiving, and advocacy.

For AMI this is an opportunity to hear from voices which are rarely heard and whose perspective speaks to one of the most traumatic and difficult experiences in recent Myanmar history.

Questions and Answers will follow the presentations.

For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.

04/03/2026

The Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness is proud to show the documentary ‘When the Water Horse Seeks a New Home’ (2026) written and directed by Andrianus Oetjoe. The documentary will be introduced by Professor Antje Missbach.

There will be room for Q&A after the screening.

People have travelled around the world by boat for centuries, often overcoming large distances sometimes with rudimentary means and equipment and surviving their challenging journeys by both skill and sheer luck. Travelling across the sea takes place in spaces assumed to be specifically dangerous due to extreme weather and the disorienting remoteness from the mainland. Refugee boat journeys are more prone to disaster due to their lack of preparedness, technically insufficient equipment, lack of shelter en route and public oversight.

This documentary seeks to capture events that take place at sea: maritime passages of Rohingya refugees navigating the Andaman Sea. Reconstructing the events through narrative interviews with several protagonists reveals a number of uncertainties, interruptions and unexpected encounters at sea. Amidst their enforced strandedness at sea, passengers face hunger, dehydration, existential fears, and their health suffers rapidly. A specific focus of the documentary is directed at the hostile receptions of the refugees by the local population in Aceh, Indonesia, an area that itself used to produce large numbers of refugees. By following the newly arrived refugees and listening to their plans and aspirations, the documentary seeks to make plausible why Rohingya are prepared to undertake such risky journeys by boat. Besides introducing the audience to the human story behind the specific displacement of Rohingya, it also raises questions about human movement, loss, and resilience more generally.

Social connectivity isn’t just nice to have. It’s fundamental to how communities survive, adapt and flourish. Pip will take us through the latest science on social connectedness and community resilience, revealing how networks can shape our collective wellbeing and resilience.

13/02/2026

Burma’s previous Fake Elections: History not repeating itself but it rhymes?

This seminar is an online event via Zoom

Date: February 23, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 06:00 - 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time)
01:30-02:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time)

Join Zoom Meeting: please click here https://us06web.zoom.us/s/85242071512?pwd=jsQhuKuiG0xLK33Hi7piy03XHNMREv.1

Meeting ID: 852 4207 1512
Passcode: 345147

Presenter: An interested person in aspects of post - 1962 Burmese history

Description: At the January monthly seminar, Professor Nicholas Coppel presented an analysis of the 2025/2026 elections held in Myanmar to show the specific ways in which these represent a sham of the electoral process.
This month’s presentation will be mainly past oriented. The presenter will mainly discuss the
one-party 1974, 1978, 1981 and 1985 "elections" where only one candidate stood from the sole ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party and always got "elected". The January to February 1974 elections were in preparation for 8 years when on 1 March 1966, 1962 coup leader General Ne Win declared in a speech that "he would transfer power to the people" in due course. That sham if not fraudulent statement was completed or "consummated" eight years later on 2 March 1974 when the
Revolutionary Council Chairman Ne Win became President Ne Win of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma.
The President U Ne Win was "elected” and “re-elected" as “President. The background to this sham elections of 1974, 1978, 1981 and 1985 the 1974 Constitution will be briefly discussed. The
cancellation and nature of the 1990 "multiparty elections" and its special pleading if not sycophantic defence of its cancellation by a foreign diplomat and Burma-born foreign scholar will be rebutted. The presenter will conclude that this mainly past oriented presentation is prompted by the statement that "the past is not dead it is not even the past and present trends do not augur well for the future.
Questions and Answers will follow the presentations. For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.

Photo credit: Google (Getty Images)

31/01/2026

US policy in post-election Myanmar

by Nicholas Coppel

Trump’s silence on Myanmar exposes the growing�divergence in Western responses to global issues.

Myanmar has yet to attract serious attention from President Trump. The silence might seem surprising, as issues that have been the ostensible motivation behind Trump’s foreign policy adventurism elsewhere – such as international conflict, narcotics, online scam operations, containment of China, and rare earth supply – are very much alive in Myanmar.

Myanmar’s recent elections, held five years after the military mounted a bloody coup that continues to be actively resisted in many parts of the country, are widely regarded as a sham and a cynical attempt to legitimise military rule. Thousands of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, remain incarcerated, and many more citizens have been killed in brutal attempts to suppress resistance. The results were as expected, with the military-affiliated Union Solidarity and Development Party declared victorious.

Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand all proclaimed that the situation in Myanmar fell short of what was needed for free, fair and inclusive elections. Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations refused to send an election observer team. However, consistent with Trump’s instructions to the State Department not to comment on foreign elections, the United States did not join the chorus of condemnation.

Myanmar’s rare earth deposits do not appear to interest Trump’s Washington either. Gaining control of rare earth deposits is one of the explanations for Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland, estimated to hold the world’s eighth-largest reserves. Securing access to Myanmar’s deposits of heavy rare earths is reported to have been spruiked to Washington officials last year, but the proposal does not appear to have been taken further, possibly because there are real challenges to gaining access to Myanmar’s rare earths.

Please click the link below for the full article.
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/us-policy-post-election-myanmar

US policy in post-election Myanmar | Lowy Institute

20/01/2026

MYANMAR’S ELECTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN AND WHAT WILL CHANGE

This seminar is an online event via Zoom

Date: January 27, 2026 (Tuesday)

Time: 06:00 - 07:00 PM (Melbourne Time)
01:30-02:30 PM (Myanmar/Yangon Time)

Join Zoom Meeting: please click here https://us06web.zoom.us/s/89666839791?pwd=TJRHeGANEbzglGoVTYnbt8MOiRERcH.1
Meeting ID: 896 6683 9791
Passcode: 522994

Nicholas Coppel is a former senior career diplomat and was Australia’s Ambassador to Myanmar (2015-2018). He is currently Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Vice President of the Australia Myanmar Institute.
Previous postings include head of the peacekeeping and state-building Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), Deputy High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Deputy Ambassador to the Philippines and a posting to Washington DC.
Since the February 2021 coup, Nicholas has written opinion editorials and been interviewed by numerous media outlets about developments in Myanmar. He has researched and authored two book chapters and co-authored several academic articles on Myanmar. His monograph, Myanmar’s Digital Coup – How the World Responded, co-authored with Associate Professor Lennon Chang, is published by Palgrave Macmillan (2024).
Questions and Answers will follow the presentations. For more information about AMI, please visit aummi.edu.au/.