Who We Are

The bios you see below belong to members who are comfortable with disclosing their identities in conjunction with Baydar. However, it should be noted that our collective has members and allies who contribute significantly to this work, but cannot disclose their identities for security/privacy reasons.

Chu May Paing

Chu is a decolonial feminist, ethnographer, and a first generation Burmese American currently pursuing a PhD in anthropology at CU Boulder. After being raised as a bama Buddhist woman during the first 20 years of her life and now becoming an "Asian American", Chu constantly challenges the layers of oppressive hierarchies in both of her homes (Myanmar and the US). For Chu, research is part of self and her scholarly and creative writings on the concepts of feelings, identity, and public resistance have appeared in The New Ethnographer, American Ethnologist, and Society for Linguistic Anthropology Blog.

Peter Chan

Ethnically Chin but born and raised in Yangon, Peter immigrated to the US in 2018 and currently teaches high school Social Studies. When he’s not busy talking to people about Myanmar politics, he likes reflecting on his hybridized identity as a Chin who grew up speaking Bamar as his first language as well as his new identity as a “Burmese” immigrant and an Asian-American.

Ashley Aye Aye Dun

Ashley is a second generation Burmese American PhD student in English at Brown University. She specializes in Asian American studies and literatures. Her research interests include race, materiality, aesthetics, horror, and the body. Her work is guided by an ethos of women of color feminisms and queer of color critique. Currently, her dissertation focuses on the notion of “excess” in Asian American literary study, via works by Southeast Asian American, South Asian American, Black, and Latinx authors/visual artists. She also enjoys writing fiction.