Thailand

Dr. Prasertsuk is currently the Associate Dean for International Affairs at Thammasat University, and in November 2008 organized a HYI Alum Thailand Seminar and networking party in Bangkok. His recent publications include "Thailand in 2008" (Asian Survey, Jan./Feb. 2009) and "Teaching International Relations in Thailand: Status and Prospect" (International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 2009).  Currently Dr. Prasertsuk is completing research on “Japan’s roles in East Asian Regionalism.” Among his international activities, last year he gave talks in Egypt and Kuwait, and this year will participate in the Korea-ASEAN Conference in Seoul along with giving talks on Thai politics at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

Puree Sirasoontorn, PhD., is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University. She received her Master’s in Economics of Development and her Ph.D. in Economics from Australian National University. Her research interests include economics of regulation and competition policy, corporate governance, energy economics and ICT and telecommunication economics. She has extensive experience in the fields of energy policy and regulation, including research projects on energy tariff regulation in Thailand, implications of the Energy Industry Act for the Thai energy sector, privatization of state-owned electric utilities, Thai economic measures and policy on energy crisis, and lignite and liquefied petroleum gas pricing and subsidization policy in Thailand. Her research interests extend to sectoral-level economic measures and policies and governance issues on climate change. She has collaborated with LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank, where she led a study on mobile value-added services in Thailand. She is a frequent guest lecturer on regulatory economics to energy regulators in various countries such as Bangladesh, Namibia and the ASEAN countries. She also advises the Energy Regulatory Board of Thailand on electricity tariff regulation.  Puree serves as a reviewer for journals such as Regulation & Governance, International Energy Journal and Thammasat Economic Journal, and occasionally writes newspaper columns on infrastructural reform and regulation.

Non Arkaraprasertkul is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Harvard University. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he studied architecture and urban design. He also taught at MIT as a Visiting Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Design (2007-2008) and is a member of the global MIT-SIGUS Alumni Group. He is interested in modern Chinese history, urban anthropology, anthropology of China, urbanism and housing, urban political economy, Marxism, and history and theory of modern architecture.

Current Research Interests: Urban anthropology; modern Chinese history and society; modern architecture and urban design; Asian cities and cultural study in East Asia (focusing on ever-emerging Asian mega-cities); urbanism and housing; built forms and their cultural construction; urban morphology & theories; history theory criticism of architecture; visualizing cultures and sensory ethnography; sexuality and modern urbanism

Current research projects: Poised between the disciplines of architectural history and anthropology, my scholarship work stands as a fine example of how urban planning can set the stage for a fuller understanding of both the architectural and social present of a city. The placement of urban planning in a greater socio-political web gives context to our everyday built environment, raising an important awareness regarding the tactile and layered nature of the urban fabric. An emphasis on the symbolic aspects of urbanism calls to anthropology as it analyzes the tension, dynamic, and negotiation between the people living there and the symbolic image that the developers could foster whether that is hegemonic powers or the authority.Methodologically, I aim at opening up an interdisciplinary way of understanding planning history. By complementing intensive archival study with comprehensive use of literature from multiple fields of analysis as well as through historical ethnographies of urban life, I want to show how planning history can benefit from fieldwork and the researcher’s immersion with the field site. The contribution of my doctoral research will lie in its skillful negotiation of politically charged terrain to make sense of the process of urbanization in China in a broader sense through the understanding of the planning process both in a larger realm of planning cultures and a more focused case study of local communities in Shanghai. Its discussion of the theoretical frameworks of urbanization will takes into account various disciplines, including history, geography, architecture, sociology, and anthropology, shedding new light on the conflicts and tensions over urban space brought about by the sort of transformations that have been seen in Shanghai in recent years.

Current publication on my research project:  “Spatial Change and Housing in Shanghai: An Ethnography of the New Urban Middle-Class and an ‘Old’ Post-Colonial City,” 110th American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting: Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies, Montreal, QC, Canada (November 2011)

Prof. Sthapitanonda got her Ph.D. from Ohio University, and currently, she is an Associate Professor at the faculty of Communication Arts at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.  Previously, she worked as the deputy director of social research Institute of Chulalongkorn University from 2002 to 2004, the president of Ph.D. program and the deputy dean for the graduate programs at Chulalongkorn University from 2004 to 2006.  She also acted as the advisor for the minister of Transportation, and deputy minister of Transportation from 2005 to 2006, and consultant for the Health Promotion Fund from 2003 to the 2006. Her current research area focuses on communication and campaigns in various topics, ranging from commercial to noncommercial and political issues.