Siya Uthai

Siya Uthai, completed her PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany in 2015. Her dissertation in title “Community and Development in Globalizing World: Rights of Indigenous People on Land Use in Thailand”. She is a lecturer at the department of Social Sciences and Development, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University in Thailand. Her field focuses on natural resources, development, local movements and human security. Her works mostly attempt to study impacts from economic development to local livelihoods, which bring them into resistance involving to natural resource management, especially, on land issues. As her work experiences with NGOs and organic movements in Thailand, she started to study local livelihoods in relation to transformation of food production. She now, works on the research project of women’s rights and food security in Mekong River by impacts of hydropower development. This work is in collaboration between Vietnamese and Thai scholars to study impacts from development projects along Mekong River to local people and the final paper aim at policy advocacy at national and regional levels. And the project “Living in the forest: Knowledge and Practices of Karen Community in Northern Thailand” by local knowledge from Karen community at Huay Hin Lad Nai village can motivate other local communities, especially, highland people to maintain their local knowledge as the way of life instead of identity losing within the realm of global economy.

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