International Education Week Webinar: Health in Times of Conflict: Resilience among People Fleeing Myanmar

The area studies centers at UNC and Duke partner with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to offer globally-focused professional development during International Education Week. International Education Week, held in November annually, is a national week of the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Education that celebrates the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide.

This year, under the theme of “Resilience in the Face of Conflict,” the Carolina Asia Center is proud to offer a professional development webinar for K-14 educators on the topic of “Health in Times of Conflict: Resilience among People Fleeing Myanmar.”

People’s health – on both the individual and population level – is deeply interconnected with sociopolitical factors. Political conflict has critical health implications, and these impacts often work along the gradients of existing social inequities. This talk examines these interconnections through a look at the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, the subsequent popular uprising, and the implications in particular for historically marginalized communities in and displaced from eastern Myanmar. This centering of communities whose roots are on the Thailand-Myanmar border highlights day-to-day resistance to state oppression and offers insight into cross-border and transnational solidarities. This webinar asks how these solidarities support health and well-being, even in the face of ongoing state-instituted violence and harm.

Find more details, and register for the webinar, at https://areastudies.unc.edu/iew

Our speaker, Ann Suk, is a doctoral candidate in the UNC Department of Anthropology, focusing on health among refugee populations fleeing Myanmar. She has a background in public health, and she has conducted fieldwork in both Thailand and the United States.