I am a political anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. In 2022, I received my PhD in Social Anthropology with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University. Before joining Purdue, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University in the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies’ Program in Agrarian Studies (2022-2023) and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies (2023-2024). 

My first book, Speculating on Transition: Imagining Urban Futures in Myanmar’s New City, analyzes a proposal to construct a built-from-scratch “new city” outside Yangon, Myanmar’s former colonial capital and current economic center. This ambitious plan thrust residents of the 20,000-acre project area into the center of a volatile market for new urban land, opening avenues for vast profit—if also financial ruin. Speculating on Transition chronicles everyday attempts to speculate on the outcome of Myanmar’s pursuit of urban development and, with it, the country’s political future.

My second project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities through its Dangers and Opportunities of Technology program, explores the social media fundraising campaigns sustaining Myanmar’s Spring Revolution. The project argues that, while transnational fundraising aims to support democratic activism in Myanmar, fundraisers’ digital tactics depend on the very profit-generating mechanisms that make social media susceptible to undemocratic ends.

My work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays program. I am also a co-founder and member of the editorial team for Tea Circle, a multilingual forum for new research on Burma/Myanmar.

Questions? Please write me at ctwittek(at)purdue.edu