Y (Yin) Nyein

Biography

Yin Nyein is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, The Hague), Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is part of 'The politics of agrarian transformations in Myanmar,' a research and training initiative based at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Chiang Mai University. He is also a member of the RRUSHES-5 project funded by the European Research Council Advanced Grant, led by Professor Jun Borras. His PhD research focuses on land, rivers and governance, exploring the social inequality, class relations, and moral economy within small-scale fishery and riparian communities (such as seasonal peasants, fishers and labourers). His research will bring a longue duree perspective on natural resource governance, particularly land, rivers and wetlands governance, along with an analysis of rural class dynamics. It will examine how the social-cultural identity and social cohesion of coastal and riparian communities in lower and upper Myanmar were transformed by different political regimes and capitalist policies over time.

Before joining the PhD program, he had been working with civil society organizations and movements in Myanmar, specifically on fisheries and natural resource governance, since around 2009. He played a role in the fisher community’s collective demand-making actions for reforms of neoliberal policies in the fishery sector. During the national regime transition period in 2010-2020, he worked in consultative processes of several regional governance bodies, while assisting local fisher communities in law-making processes. He earned a Master of Public Policy from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. His MPP research studies the fishing rights movement and collaborative governance in the inland fishery sector of the Ayeyarwaddy Region.