Organizer: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University
Type/Location: Hybrid / DeKalb, IL
Description:
Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Dr. Mai Van Tran, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Tran will examine the extent to which pro-democracy platform advocacy might affect Big Tech’s practices and curb platform-mediated repression in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia.
About the Speaker:
Mai Van Tran (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and a faculty associate with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Her research agenda focuses on the changing dynamics of contentious politics in non-democracies, especially in Southeast Asian contexts. Her ongoing work examines resistance to digital repression in the Global South, by analyzing cross-platform authoritarian repression, dissidents' resilience capacity, and drivers of impactful platform advocacy in Southeast Asia. Adopting an engaged mixed methods research agenda, her research has integrated social media analysis with in-depth interviews with digital rights advocates and marginalized activists across Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia.
Prof. Tran's academic research and book review are published at International Affairs, Big Data & Society, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Asian Politics & Policy, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, and Open Research Europe. She has disseminated policy recommendations to development practitioners at the RightsCon Summit, Myanmar Digital Rights Forum, Meta, United Nations, European Union, Oxfam, etc. Other public scholarship works include the Digital Defence Resources and analyses in The Washington Post, Brookings Institution, Al Jazeera, AP, New Mandala, Tech Policy Press etc. Before joining NIU, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Copenhagen.
Registration:
To attend the event in person, please register here.
To attend the event virtually, please register here.