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The Burma/Myanmar naming controversy on Wikipedia stands as an exemplary debate at least in terms of the politeness and civility of discourse. It was also one of the longer running debates on Wikipedia beginning almost at the same time as the creation of the article in 2003. But this debate has other lessons for those interested in one of the world’s key pieces of information infrastructure. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The author’s approach to the study of the Wikipedia talk pages devoted to the Burma/Myanmar naming controversy is qualitative in nature and explores the debate over sources through textual analysis.

Editors brought to their work a number of underlying assumptions including the primacy of the nation-state and the nature of a “true” encyclopedia. These were combined with a particular interpretation of neutral point of view (NPOV) policy that unnecessarily prolonged the debate and, more importantly, would have the effect, if widely adopted, of reducing Wikipedia’s potential to include multiple perspectives on any particular topic.

The study clearly shows how editors tend to uncritically reproduce the dominant assumptions of their societies. When combined with positivist readings of NPOV policy, this has grave implications for Wikipedia’s potential to open up representation to a wider set of knowledge producers and perspectives. Much of this potential cannot be realized if the assumptions of editors, especially their flawed understanding of NPOV, cannot be challenged effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to further understand the medical experiences of Karen refugees who have been resettled to the USA. It examines the use of traditional medicine throughout the transition from Burma to the USA, as well as refugees’ experiences in the American healthcare system. This study aims to identify shortcomings in refugees’ access to preferred methods of healthcare.

Interviews were conducted with 39 Karen refugees in 3 US cities with large populations of refugees from Burma – Fort Wayne, Indiana; Amarillo, Texas; and Buffalo, New York. Participants were asked questions about their healthcare experiences in Burma and the USA, their use of traditional medicine in both countries and their satisfaction with medical care in the USA.

Nearly all interviewees reported using traditional medicine in Burma, but only six felt able to continue to use traditional methods in the USA. Most participants had positive experiences with healthcare in America, but 15 expressed dissatisfaction with obtaining health insurance and confusion over its coverage. Findings also indicate that refugees do not feel that traditional practices are accepted in the USA.

Due to the language barrier, a phone interpreter was used for non-English-speaking participants, which may have affected proper understanding or clarity of answers.

This study brings to attention the need to improve refugee healthcare by encouraging traditional practices and assisting refugees with obtaining health insurance.

This paper identifies the importance of analyzing the accessibility of various forms of healthcare, including traditional medicine, to refugees in the USA.

Current discussions around the lack of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals tend to emphasize deficiencies in governance as a major contributory factor. While agreeing with this assessment, this paper takes issue with the conventional understanding of what “governance” implies. Using Burma as an illustration, it suggests the current focus on purely administrative and organizational concerns must be broadened to encompass the wider political context in which these Goals are to be pursued. Authoritarian political structures must be confronted and challenged, if these worthy Goals are to have any realistic chance of being attained.

The purpose of this case study is to discuss and analyze the process of developing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital humanities projects across several institutions.

This case study will provide an overview of a multi-institutional digital humanities project from the planning phase to implementation. In particular, this case study will discuss identifying institutional partners, collaborating with a design, designing for curricular integration and best practices for sustaining a project of this size and scope.

Sustainable collaboration develops slowly over time. Communication and consensus-building are key components to completing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital project. Scalable design is a crucial step in planning for project expansion.

Though many journal articles articulate “best practices” for collaboration among geographically dispersed institutions, very few case studies discuss “best practices” within the context of project development, from initial idea to completion.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the history and dark tourism attractions associated with a case study of the Thai-Burma Railway in the city of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The paper considers how history has been abridged and distorted at a number of attraction sites in order to exploit the dark tourism commercial potential. The role of film media is considered as a critical element of the site narrative and the reality of the tragic past of this place is discussed within the context of Thailand’s role in the Second World War. Kanchanaburi, through the urban attractions that constitute the primary motivations for visitation, distorts and exploits its dark history for commercial and ideological purposes. Where accurate the Second World War interpretation was identified, it was maintained by balancing the requirements of national governments and institutions with acceptable levels of ambiguity and non-controversial perspectives on this urban location’s dark past.

The paper draws on literature, historical documents and tourism publications related to the Second World War and the incarceration and forced labour associated with the Thai-Burma Railway and the city of Kanchanaburi. Fieldwork incorporating tourist attraction and commemorative site visitation was undertaken in Northern Thailand in January 2017. Curators, managers, operators and tourist authorities were contacted in advance of the fieldwork by e-mail to request interviews. The sites identified were the primary sites visited by tourists, and no related Second World War site in the area was excluded. For those interviewed in relation to the subject area, a standard questionnaire based on a rolling database, relevant to particular sites was utilised. Interviews were taped and transcribed.

The city of Kanchanaburi is defined by a heritage that has changed over time. Many factors imbue the meanings and content of place. This is a function of a plethora of competing Influences and agendas; political, economic, cultural, demographic and historical. Yet, this destination is defined by the dark history of the Second World War which is associated with this place. The visitor attraction sites considered in Kanchanaburi provide multiple narratives around the Second World War events. They offer a range of content driven by influences as diverse as simple commercial gain to the complex interaction of political, economic and ideological agendas (cf. Gegner, 2012). In each case, the interpretation is used to articulate heritage through objects, artefacts, audio recording, place or imagery. These elements exist in environment(s) of their creation; the Second World War heritage of Kanchanaburi is developed in a nation that has only a partial and selective acceptance of its role in this conflict. The visitor attractions examined in this research and their content have all re-constructed and re-represented the past. Historical memorialization remains embedded in interests that are global, commercial, ideological but rarely neutral. The interpretation of the Thai-Burma Railway and the narrative of the many victims is associated with the construction merit respect, commemoration and consideration that is value free and not distorted by ideology or commercial imperatives.

This paper provides a foundation for further consideration of how such contested dark heritage is viewed not least by visitors and users. Development of research in this area would provide a valuable source of data on: consumer profiles, motivations and orientation. Relating this data to nationality and origin would provide useful comparative data to that offered by operators and managers of key attractions. Furthermore, the prevalence of social and digital media as primary tourist information source could be measured against the continued (and possibly declining) importance of the filmic narrative. Furthermore, deeper evaluation of nature and content of interpretation is merited, given the range of approaches and content observed. At a political and policy level, the treatment of this part of Thai history and the degree of sensitivity around interpretation is linked to how a nation confronts its difficult past. More thorough evaluation of treatment in national media and education curriculum also merits review. Urban heritage is an important element of urban destination marketing and evaluation based around core themes of transparency, openness, respect for the past, and sensitive treatment of tragic events offer direction for application and evaluation in other urban contexts.

This is the first time the heritage of this city has been considered in the context of dark tourism and the role of Thailand in the Second World War. It incorporates an analysis of all of the relevant attractions in the city and provides through the fieldwork conducted an original contribution to the tourism literature in this field. It draws on historical record, original documentation, interview analysis and tourism data. It provides further evidence of the dark tourism phenomena in a South East Asian context linked to a conflicted and selective appraisal of the past.

This paper's aim is to describe the health experiences of a recently arrived group of refugees, the Karen from Burma, in an American midwestern city.

Four focus groups were conducted in their native language with 40 Karen refugees: one group of ten Sgaw Karen speaking men and one of women, one of East Pwo Karen speaking men and one of women. The focus groups and two additional individual interviews were coded using NVivo‐9.

The findings emphasize the significant communication barriers experienced by the Karen. The data provide rich insights into the struggles being experienced by these new Americans in their own words and highlight some of their differences from previous Asian refugees.

These data are derived from focus groups with refugees in one city in the USA with few available demographic details. Their experiences and observations may not apply to other Burmese refugee groups in other cities and countries.

The data emphasize the complexity of language of this group of Burmese refugees which acts as a significant barrier to accessing health care. Poor or improper interpretation has increased obstacles. Data indicate that many struggle with simple health care tasks that are likely taken for granted by most providers. There appears to be more alcohol and tobacco usage amongst both genders than in other recently arrived Asian groups.

This is original research, which supplements a prior chart review and overview paper by the first author and supplements the otherwise scant literature on this group outside Asia.

After the fall of Burma on 10 March 1942 the British government extensively implemented scorched-earth policies in Bengal like denial of rice and boats. The British government had inadequate defense equipment to resist Japanese attack in Bengal. After the Japanese invasion supply of Burmese rice suddenly stopped. Faridpur district used to import rice from Burma. The Burmese conquest created an immediate and serious crisis for several rice imported districts and coastal districts of Bengal. Hence, none of the districts of East Bengal could escape its brutal clutches and severity recorded in Chittagong, Dhaka, Faridpur, Tripura, Noakhali, Bakargonj and so on.

Among the affected districts of Bengal, Faridpur has been chosen as study area due to severity of famine. This study addresses the famine scenario of Faridpur. Data has been collected from primary and secondary sources. Content Analysis Research method is used to test reliability and validity of the data. Historical Analysis Research method has been followed in this study.

Finding of the study shows that the government relief issues, ignorance of warnings, political nepotism and denial policy of British government intensified the famine of Faridpur district. The wartime tactics adopted by the colonial government aggravated the famine situation. This article has shed light on the government war time policy, activity and some impacts of British decline in Burma that fueled the famine in Faridpur district.

This study is my original research work and has not been published else where.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive perspective of the documented physical and mental health issues Karen refugees from Burma face as a result of war and refugee trauma, and migration. The review will address the question: What is the impact of trauma and migration on the physical and mental health of Karen refugees?

A total of 18 articles were systematically selected for inclusion in the final review. The focal content for included articles includes qualitative and quantitative research representative of the health and migration experiences of Karen refugees.

The findings of this review demonstrate significance for health providers from a public health standpoint as programs and services are targeted to meet the specific health needs of the Karen community. It also highlights the contribution of the Karen forced migration experience to the complexity of individual and community health needs, particularly as a result of the protracted conflict.

This critical appraisal of the body of literature describing the health experiences of Karen refugees from Burma, with a particular focus on outcomes relevant to resettlement, demonstrates value as programs are developed with an integrated refugee perspective.

This article delineates the pilot implementation of the Rohingya Archive (R-Archive). The R-Archive seeks to both confront and exploit the roles of documentation and recordkeeping in forced displacement of Rohingya people through targeted physical and bureaucratic violence in Myanmar. This grassroots activist intervention is located at the intersection of technology, rights, records, jurisdictions and economics. Using Arweave's blockweave, the R-Archive secures copies of records, such as identity documentation, land deeds and personal papers, carried into diaspora by Rohingya refugees against unauthorised alteration, deletion and loss, providing a trust infrastructure for accumulating available evidence in support of rights claims and cultural preservation.

Iterative development of functional requirements, data collection processes and identification of a technological solution for the community-based, post-custodial, blockchain-inspired R-Archive; design and testing of the R-Archive pilot; and analysis of trust and economic concerns arising.

A complex set of interconnecting considerations is raised by this use of emerging technologies in service to a vulnerable and diasporic community. Hostile governments and volatile cryptocurrencies are both threats to the distributed post-custodial R-Archive. However, the strength of the community bonds that form the archive and articulated in its records speak to the possibility of perdurance for a global Rohingya archive, and working through the challenges surfaced by its development offers the possibility to serve as a model that might be adaptable for other grassroots archival activist projects initiated by oppressed, marginalised and diasporic communities.

Personal and community safety and accessibility concerns, especially in refugee camps and under Covid-19 restrictions, presented particular challenges to carrying out the research and development that are addressed in the research design and future research plans.

The goal of this pilot was to collect and store examples of a range of documents that demonstrate different aspects of Rohingya culture and links to the homeland as well as those that record formal evidentiary relationships between members of the Rohingya community now in diaspora and the Burmese state (e.g. acknowledgements of citizenship). The pilot was intended to demonstrate the viability of using a blockchain-inspired decentralised archival system combined with a community-driven approach to data collection and then to evaluate the results for potential to scale.

The R-Archive is a community-centred and driven effort to identify and preserve, under as secure and trusted conditions as possible, digital copies of documents that are of juridical, cultural and personal value to the Rohingya people and also of significance as primary documentary evidence that might be used by international legal institutions in investigating genocide taking place in Burma and by academic researchers studying the history of Burma.

The R-Archive is novel in terms of its technological application (Arweave), the economic concerns of a vulnerable stateless population it is trying to address, and its functional complexity, in that its goal is simultaneously to serve both legal evidentiary and community archive functions. The R-Archive is also an important addition to other notable efforts in the diasporic Rohingya community that have attempted to employ the tools of technology for cultural preservation.