“Navigating dispossession: Gender and agency among Burmese migrants in Thailand’s border economic zones.”  On April 2, 2014, 4pm in Diamond 141 the department of anthropology will welcome back, Adam Saltsman, Colby ’04. Adam is about to complete his Ph.D. at Boston College. He will present his dissertation research with Burmese migrants in Thailand, the culmination of many years of working on refugee and border issues in the region. Adam will also be available during the afternoon of April 2 to discuss his career in human rights advocacy and research with all interested students. Please contact Prof. Mills, [email protected], if you would like to meet with Adam.

A reception in the Diamond atrium will follow the talk. All are welcome.

Here’s what Adam has been up to since leaving Colby:

“Since graduating from Colby in 2004, I have worked primarily in the field of human rights and on migration/refugee issues. My first job after college was as a case worker with a refugee resettlement agency in Austin, Texas.  Having studied abroad in Vietnam in 2003 during my junior year at Colby, I was interested in returning to Southeast Asia and ended up moving to Cambodia at the end of 2005 as a fellow with the International Center for Conciliation, a small organization focusing on community-based conflict resolution and access to justice. Though I enrolled in a PhD program in the Department of Sociology at Boston College in 2007, I continued to work with the International Center for Conciliation remotely until 2008 and I continued to explore more “applied” opportunities at the same time I pursued my MA and PhD.  This included internships and consultancies in Jordan and Thailand doing research with refugee populations.  Based on these opportunities, I wrote my MA thesis: “Contested Rights: Subjugation and struggle among Burmese forced migrants in exile.” In 2011, I moved full-time to Thailand to work and do research for my dissertation.  There, while putting together a collaborative research project on the Thailand-Myanmar border I also partnered with Human Rights Watch and co-authored the report “Ad hoc and Inadequate: Thailand’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers” in 2012.  I also worked full time as the protection coordinator for the International Rescue Committee in Mae Sot, Thailand on projects supporting access to justice and gender based violence response for mostly undocumented Burmese migrants.  Since late 2013, I have been writing my dissertation.”