Mikael Gravers has been a Nordic and European scholar in NIAS and received a grant from HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark’s Fund. Danish media often request his analysis of events in Burma and Thailand.
Since 1970-1972 he has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Karen ethnic group in Thailand (and Burma). The first fieldwork in Uthaithani and Kanchanaburi provinces was among the Buddhist Pwo Karen (Ga Ploung) and he speaks a proficient Pwo. He has visited this area numerous times and since 1999 also conducted fieldwork among Christian and Buddhist Sgaw (Pgha G’Nyau) and Pwo in Chiang Mai and Lamphun provinces as well as among Karen refugees from Burma. His work on Burma is mainly based on archival research in the Oriental & India Office Collections, The British Library and Public Record Office, Kew in London. He has met with ethnic leaders from the Karen National Union and other ethnic organizations.
From 1999 to 2001 Mikael Gravers was the director of the anthropological part of the interdisciplinary Thai-Danish environmental research project Forest & People in Thailand.He has published on subjects such as ethnicity, nationalism; religion and politics; notions of nature and environment in Burma and Thailand.
Books by this author
Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Burma
this volume discusses the historical formation of ethnic identity and its complexities in relation to British colonial rule as well as to the modern State, the present situation of military rule and its policy of ‘myanmarfication’. Changes of identity in exile and due to religious conversion are analysed and discussed. The book deals with relevant and recent anthropological and sociological theoretical discussions on the ethnic identity, boundaries and space of all the main ethnic groups in Burma.