A student of politics, law and society, mainly in Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. Researching state violence, specifically torture. Interpretivist. Luddite. For public university, organised labour, ideas without marketplace, education toward democracy.
Semester 1, 2024 Interpretation, Method, Critique seminar series details online here
Associate professor, Department of Political and Social Change, and director, Myanmar Research Centre/မြန်မာ့ရေးရာသုတေသနဌာန at the Australian National University
Co-convenor, Interpretation, Method, Critique, ANU; joint editor, ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series (NUS Press); editorial board member, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law; executive committee member, Interpretive Methodologies & Methods;
Workplace rep, National Tertiary Education Union (in the Bell School) Work at an Australian university? Join your Union. Let’s fight big business’s capture of higher education together.
podcasting
Host, Interpretive Political and Social Science; contributor, Southeast Asian Studies, both on the New Books Network
teaching
In 2024: Meaning in politics (undergraduate) and Interpretation, method, critique (graduate) (both with April Biccum); Later: Human rights in Asia; and Colonialism & the rule of law (with Desmond Manderson)
Syllabi available here; other syllabi in interpretive methodologies and methods are here
supervising
Chair / primary supervisor: Heba Al Adawy, Samuel Hmung, David Hopkins; associate supervisor: Ray Yen, Dinith Adikhari; Undergraduate honours supervisor: Emma Crocker
previously…
Held visiting positions at Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2022-23; Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, & Ritsumeikan University, 2019-20; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton & American Bar Foundation, Chicago, 2016-17
Received the Distinguished Book Award, Asian Law & Society Association, 2017; Discovery Early Career Research Award, Australian Research Council, 2015; President’s Prize, Asian Studies Association of Australia, 2013; JG Crawford Prize, the Australian National University, 2013; F G Bradshaw Prize, University of Western Australia, 2002
Served as editorial board member, Law and Social Inquiry (2016-2018); committee member, Association of Mainland Southeast Asia Scholars (2017-2022)
Supervised Matthew Venker (external), Wong Kai Shing (PhD, Mahidol University, external), Sirichinda Thongchinda (chair), Tanika Sibal (BAsian Studies Hons), Oliver Friedmann (PhB Hons), Ana Alonso (associate) Gerard McCarthy (associate), Catherine Yen (PhB Hons), Kristina Simion (associate), Eve Warburton (associate), Jaqueline Menager (associate), Chit Win (associate), Tushira Wickramariyaratne (M Nat Sec Policy Hons, associate), Alice Dawkins (LLB Hons, associate), Tamas Wells (external)
Graduated with PhD (ANU), MEd (Hons) (UWA), GDipEd, BCom (Melbourne)
books
Cheesman, N 2023, Myanmar: A Political Lexicon, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. [Pre-publication Open Access manuscript available here.]
Cheesman, N 2015, Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
articles
Cheesman, N 2023, ‘Torture in Thailand at the Limits of Law.’ Law & Social Inquiry, 48.1, pp. 236-261.
Cheesman, N 2022, ‘Law and Order.’ Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 18, pp. 263-281. [OPEN ACCESS]
Cheesman, N 2022, ‘On the Banality of Paperwork and the Brutality of Judicial Bureaucracy in Myanmar.’ History and Anthropology, 33.1, pp. 165-182. [Special issue: “Material encounters”; republished here]
Cheesman, N 2021, ‘Reading Paperwork Realistically.’ Politics, Groups, and Identities, 9.4, pp. 835-840. [Dialogue section: “Misunderstanding ethnography”]
Cheesman, N 2019, ‘Routine Impunity as Practice (in Myanmar).’ Human Rights Quarterly, 41, 4, pp. 873-892.
Chambers, J & Cheesman, N 2019, 'Introduction: Coming to Terms with Moral Authorities in Myanmar', Sojourn, 34, 2, pp. 231-257.
Cheesman, N & Janse, R 2019, 'Martin Krygier's Passion for the Rule of Law (and His Virtues)', Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 11, 2-3, pp. 255-276. [OPEN ACCESS]
Cheesman, N 2018, 'Rule-of-Law Ethnography', Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 14, pp. 167-184.
Cheesman, N 2017, 'How in Myanmar "National Races" Came to Surpass Citizenship and Exclude Rohingya', Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47, 3, pp. 461-483. [Republished here]
Cheesman, N 2017, 'Introduction: Interpreting Communal Violence in Myanmar', Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47, 3, pp. 335-352. [OPEN ACCESS; republished here]
Cheesman, N 2016, 'Reading Hobbes's Sovereign into a Burmese Narrative of Police Torture', Asia Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, 17, 2, pp. 199-211. [Special section on torture after 9/11 coedited with Cynthia Banham.]
Cheesman, N 2016, 'Rule-of-Law Lineages in Colonial and Early Post-colonial Burma', Modern Asian Studies, 50, 2, pp. 564-601.
Cheesman, N, D'Costa, B & Haberkorn, T 2016, 'Anticipating the Struggle against Everyday Impunity in Myanmar through Accounts from Bangladesh and Thailand', Asia & The Pacific Policy Studies, 3, 1, pp. 48-61. [OPEN ACCESS]
Cheesman, N 2015, 'That Signifier of Desire, the Rule of Law', Social Research, 82, 2, pp. 267-290.
Cheesman, N 2014, 'What Does the Rule of Law Have to Do with Democratization (in Myanmar)?' South East Asia Research, 22, 2, pp. 213-232.
Cheesman, N & Kyaw Min San 2014, 'Not Just Defending; Advocating for Law in Myanmar', Wisconsin International Law Journal, 31, 3, pp. 702-733.
Cheesman, N 2014, 'Law and Order as Asymmetrical Opposite to the Rule of Law', Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 6, 1, pp. 96-114.
Cheesman, N 2011, 'How an Authoritarian Regime in Burma Used Special Courts to Defeat Judicial Independence', Law and Society Review, 45, 4, pp. 801-830.
Cheesman, N 2009, 'Thin Rule of Law or Un-Rule of Law in Myanmar?', Pacific Affairs, 82, 4, pp. 597-613.
Cheesman, N 2003, 'School, State and Sangha in Burma', Comparative Education, 39, 1, pp. 45-63.
Cheesman, N 2002, 'Seeing Karen in the Union of Myanmar', Asian Ethnicity, 3, 2, pp. 199-220.
chapters
Mason, D & Cheesman, N 2023. ‘Land and Law between Reform and Revolution’, in Simpson, A & Farrelly, N (eds), Myanmar: Politics, Economy and Society, 2nd ed., Routledge, London, pp. 60-74.
Dawkins, A & Cheesman, N 2022, ‘Political Lawyers and the Legal Occupation in Myanmar,’ in Whalen-Bridge, H (ed.) The Role of Lawyers in Access to Justice: Asian and Comparative Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 124-144.
Cheesman, N 2022, ‘An Experiment with the Island Detention of Public Enemies in Postcolonial Burma’, in Cribb, R, Twomey, C & Wilson, S (eds), Detention Camps in Asia, Brill, Leiden, pp. 63-81.
Cheesman, N 2021, ‘Unbound Comparison’, in Smith, N & Simmons, E (eds), Rethinking Comparison, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 64-83.
Cheesman, N 2021, ‘Police Torture: A Case for Interdisciplinarity’, in Talesh, S, Mertz, E & Klug, H (eds), Research Handbook on Modern Legal Realism, Edward Elgar, pp.112-123.
Khan, M & Cheesman, N 2020, 'Law, Lawyers and Legal Institutions', in Simpson, A & Farrelly, N (eds), Myanmar: Politics, Economy and Society, 1st ed., Routledge, London, pp. 44-58.
Cheesman, N & Fernando, B 2019, 'Why Asian Legal Institutions Fail to Protect the Rights of the Vulnerable', in De Varennes, F & Gardiner, C (eds), Routledge Handbook of Human Rights in Asia, Routledge, New York, pp. 16-29.
Cheesman, N 2019, 'Pragmatic Critique of Torture, in Sri Lanka', in Fassin, D & Harcourt, B (eds), A Time for Critique, Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 193-209.
Cheesman, N 2017, 'Las cuatro décadas de lucha interna en Birmania' (Burma's four decades of struggle within), in Iacobelli, P, Cribb, R & Perrelló J (eds), Asia y el Pacífico durante la Guerra Fría (Asia and the Pacific during the Cold War), Fondo de Cultura Economica, Santiago, pp. 209-222.
Cheesman, N 2016, 'Myanmar and the promise of the political', in Nick Cheesman and Nicholas Farrelly (ed.), Conflict in Myanmar: War, Politics, Religion, ISEAS, Singapore, pp. 353-366.
Cheesman, N 2015, 'The Right to Have Rights' / အခွင့်အရေး ရပိုင်ခွင့် in Cheesman N & Htoo Kyaw Win (eds), Communal Violence in Myanmar / မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ လူမျိုးရေးဘာသာရေးပဋိပက္ခ Myanmar Knowledge Society, Yangon, pp. 139-164.
Cheesman, N 2014, 'Bodies on the Line in Burma's Law Reports, 1892-1922', in Crouch, M & Lindsey (eds), Law, Society and Transition in Myanmar, Hart, Oxford, pp. 77-94.
Crouch, M & Cheesman, N 2014, 'A Short Research Guide to Myanmar's Legal System', in Crouch, M & Lindsey, T (eds), Law, Society and Transition in Myanmar, Hart, Oxford, pp. 21-32.
Cheesman, N 2014, 'Democratization, Violence, and Myanmar', in Cheesman, N, Farrelly, N & Wilson T (eds), Debating Democratization in Myanmar, ISEAS, Singapore, pp. 331-349.
Cheesman, N 2012, 'Myanmar's Courts and the Sounds Money Makes', in Cheesman, N, Skidmore, M & Wilson, T (eds), Myanmar's Transition Openings, Obstacles and Opportunities, ISEAS, Singapore, pp. 231-248.
Cheesman, N 2010, 'The Incongruous Return of Habeas Corpus to Myanmar', in Cheesman, N, Skidmore, M & Wilson, T (eds), Ruling Myanmar From Cyclone Nargis to National Elections, ISEAS, Singapore, pp. 90-111.
symposia
Halliday, T, Chua, L, Liu, S & Cheesman, N 2018, 'Book Discussion - Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order', Asian Journal of Law and Society, 5, 2, pp. 485-498.
Cheesman, N 2017, 'Taking the Rule of Law's Opposition Seriously', Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 9, 1, pp. 29-44. [Symposium on Opposing the Rule of Law with Martin Krygier, Sally Engle Merry, Frank Munger, and Jothie Rajah.]
essays
Cheesman, N 2023, ‘Where the People Are (Myanmar’s armed resistance and rehabilitation of “the People” as revolutionary actor).’ Arena Quarterly, 14, pp. 68-75.
Cheesman, N 2021, ‘Revolution in Myanmar.’ Arena Quarterly, 8, pp. 60-65.
papers
Cheesman, N 2019, ‘Myanmar, law and order, the moon and me’, presented at London School of Economics, June 6.
Cheesman, N 2017, ‘Theorizing about Torture’, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science, Occasional Paper No. 59. [OPEN ACCESS]
edited books
Cheesman, N, ed., 2018, Interpreting Communal Violence in Myanmar, Routledge, London.
Cheesman, N & Farrelly, N, eds, 2016, Conflict in Myanmar: War, Politics, Religion, ISEAS, Singapore.
Cheesman, N & Htoo Kyaw Win, eds, 2015, Communal Violence in Myanmar / မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ လူမျိုးရေးဘာသာရေးပဋိပက္ခ Myanmar Knowledge Society, Yangon.
Cheesman, N, Farrelly, N & Wilson, T, eds, 2014, Debating Democratization in Myanmar, ISEAS, Singapore.
Cheesman, N, Skidmore, M & Wilson, T, eds, 2012, Myanmar's Transition Openings, Obstacles and Opportunities, ISEAS, Singapore.
Cheesman, N, Skidmore, M & Wilson, T, eds, 2010, Ruling Myanmar From Cyclone Nargis to National Elections, ISEAS, Singapore.
reviews
Schatz, E, Slow Anti-Americanism, in Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2023) 36, 2, pp. 298-300.
Bertrand, J, Pelletier, A & Thawnghmung, A, Winning by Process, in South East Asia Research (2023) 31, 1, pp. 104-07.
‘Cyborgs, Torturers, and the Making of Forensic Psychological Knowledge’ (review essay of Lokaneeta, J, The Truth Machines), in Law and Social Inquiry (2022) 47, 2, pp. 714-719.
Celermajer, D, The Prevention of Torture, in Law and Society Review (2021) 55, 3, pp. 530-532.
Camacho, K, Sacred Men, in Journal of Pacific History (2021) 56, 1, pp. 85-86.
Chua, L, The Politics of Love in Myanmar, in Asian Journal of Law and Society (2020), 7, 3, pp. 602-605.
David, R & Holliday, I, Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar, in Asian Journal of Law and Society (2020), 7, 1, pp. 196-199.
Schonthal, B, Buddhism, Politics, and the Limits of Law, in Law and Society Review (2017) 51, 3, pp. 741-744.
Horsey, R, Ending Forced Labour in Myanmar, in South East Asia Research (2013) 21, 2, pp. 343-347.
Davis, T & Galligan, B, Human Rights in Asia, in Journal of Contemporary Asia, (2012) 42, 2, pp. 343-345.
Harding, A, and Nicholson, P, New Courts in Asia, in Asian Journal of Criminology (2011).
Evans, G, Hutton C, Kuah Khun Eng (eds), Where China Meets Southeast Asia, in Asian Ethnicity, 4, 1, pp. 152–154.
online
ABC Radio National: From Abu Ghraib to Nakhon Sawan: why does torture persist? Myanmar—what are the limits of political violence? ABC Religion & Ethics: What Constitutes Torture? Myanmar’s Theatre of Violence, State Terror and Torture in Myanmar, Post-legalism and the Fear of Politics, George Floyd Was Not Just Killed, He Was Tortured