Congratulations to Htet Min Lwin, recipient of the 2024 The Penny and John Van Esterik Award for Graduate Research on Southeast Asia!
The Award is granted annually to a graduate student conducting research on Southeast Asia especially where such research will require the student to travel to Southeast Asia. Penny and John Van Esterik established the award to help York students develop expertise in Southeast Asia. Cultural anthropologists with a wide range of research experiences in the region. Penny retired from the Department of Anthropology in 2014, and continues to conduct research on maternal and child nutrition and other topics. John taught a range of courses for Anthropology and the Division of Social Science until his retirement from York University in 2008.
Htet Min Lwin (he/they) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities and Graduate Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research. He is writing a PhD on the state’s institutionalization of Buddhist monastics in Southeast Asia. He is also co-chair of Burma Studies Group under the Association for Asian Studies, and student director of EIR of the American Academy of Religion. He is also recipient of a 2024 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies.
Due to the civil war and precarious political situation in Myanmar, his research will be conducted in the Institute of Asian Research, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand for the 2024–25 academic year. By taking this field visit, the award will enable him to further identify documents, get access to the religious archives in Myanmar, and elsewhere, and collect and work on the decisions of the vinicchaya (monastic verdicts on doctrine and practice) courts. This will also allow him to gain access to identified biographies of the important monks his work will deal with, and monastic volumes (felicitation volumes, anniversary volumes, etc.), monastic archives (records, examination records) and work on interviews with important figures.