Rate My Professor Pyone Myat Thu

Pyone Myat Thu is a Lecturer in Aid and Development in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University. She earned her PhD in Human Geography from the Australian National University in 2012 with a thesis titled 'Negotiating displacement: a study of land and livelihoods in rural East Timor.' She also holds a B.Sc. with First Class Honours in Geography from the University of Western Australia and a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education from Curtin University of Technology. Her career includes serving as an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia, as well as Researcher at the Asian Research Center for Migration, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University. Thu is recognized as a human geographer specializing in development studies.

Thu's research focuses on political ecology, migration and mobilities, land and livelihoods, particularly in post-conflict Timor-Leste, Thailand, and Myanmar. Her work examines livelihoods, forced and labour migration, mobility practices, and intersections with conflict, land, and gender relations, informed by critical development studies, political ecology, forced migration, and mobilities studies. Key publications include 'Access to land and livelihoods in post-conflict Timor-Leste' (2016), 'Gendered access to customary land in East Timor' (2007), 'Land forgotten: Effects of Indonesian re-settlement on rural livelihoods in East Timor' (2008), 'Household agricultural activities and child growth: evidence from rural Timor-Leste' (2017), 'Journeys to Knua: Displacement, Return and Translocality in Timor-Leste' (2020), 'Internal displacement in Timor-Leste' (2019), and recent contributions such as 'Towards a diversified agricultural forest-based economy: Community views of planting sandalwood in Timor-Leste' (2023) and 'The impacts of COVID-19 and coup on Myanmar migrant children's education in Thailand' (2024). She received the 2024 International Social Science Collaboration and Development Grant from the Asian Association of Social Science Research Councils. Thu co-convened International Migrants Day 2024 at Murdoch University and has conducted consultancies on natural resource management in Timor-Leste.