Thailand Social Science Seminar Series (TS4)

Saowanee T. Alexander is an assistant professor of sociolinguistics at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Ubon Ratchathani University. Her research focuses are relationships between language and politics and ordinary redshirts’ participation in Thai politics.

Petra Alderman (prev. Desatová) is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Leadership for Inclusive and Democratic Politics at the University of Birmingham. She works in the areas of democracy, authoritarianism, elections, environmental leadership, and promotional politics (mainly nation branding). She has a geographical focus on Southeast Asia and is fluent in Thai.

Her recent article (co-authored with Saowanee T Alexander) on the Election Commission of Thailand and its role in the mismanagement of the 2019 Thai election has been published in the Politics journal. In addition to her academic work, Petra is also one of the hosts on the Nordic Asia Podcast, a recently launched podcast series that she helps to run.

Professor Michele Ford is Director of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Her research focuses on Southeast Asian labour movements, the intersection between national and international trade unions, labour migration, and labour’s engagement in the political sphere. She has been involved in extensive consultancy work for the ILO, the international labour movement and the Australian government.

Duncan McCargo, Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, is best known for his wide-ranging work on the politics of Thailand. His earlier books include the best-selling The Thaksinization of Thailand (with Ukrist Pathmanand, NIAS Press 2005), and the award-winning Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008). More recently, he has published Fighting for Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand (Cornell 2019) and Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (with Anyarat Chattharakul, NIAS Press 2020).  Email: duncan@nias.ku.dk

Dr Aim Sinpeng is the co-founder of the Sydney Cyber Security Network and has served as the Expert Contributor for Varieties of Democracy and the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index, which measure degrees and types of democracy. Her other scholarly works examine popular movements against democracy in democratising states, particularly in Thailand. Prior to her academic career she worked for the World Bank, a Toronto-based investment bank, governments of Thailand and the Czech Republic and the New York State Democrat Party.