LATEST RESEARCH ENGAGEMENT PUBLISHERS

Hi! My name is Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, and I am a PhD student in the Department of Government at Cornell University. I am also a 2024 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow, a 2025 Civil War Paths Fellow, a 2025 Diversity Fellow with the American Political Science Association (APSA), and a 2025 Reppy Fellow at Cornell's Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. 

I study comparative politics and international relations, with a focus on revolution, movement, regime change, violence, political culture, authoritarianism, and rebel politics. 

Before Cornell, I earned a BA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2024), following a seven-year gap after leaving Yangon University of Distance Education at Sittwe University. Prior to returning to school, I worked as a freelance journalist and analyst, writing about Myanmar’s coup, protests, resistance, and human rights for a range of global outlets, including TIME Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, and Al Jazeera. 

I am proud to be the first in my family, from a rural village in western Myanmar, to graduate from high school.

To contact, kh827@cornell.edu.

Journalism Recognization

Previously, as a former contributing writer for Pulitzer Center, I was one of the winners of the 2021 Human Rights Press Awards in Commentary, and the 2021 Sigma Delta Chi Awards in Foreign Correspondence from the Society of Professional Journalist (SPJ), as well as a finalist for the 2021 Society of Publisher in Asia (SOPA) awards for the Excellence in Opinion Writing.

American Political Science Association (APSA) •

Meet DFP Spring Fellow, Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, Cornell University -

Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is a PhD student in the department of government at Cornell University and a 2024 recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. He studies comparative politics with a focus on regime change, political violence, authoritarianism, and rebel politics. Before enrolling at Cornell, he resumed his undergraduate studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in January 2023—following a seven-year hiatus from his studies at Yangon University of Distance Education at...
Civil War Paths •

Civil War Paths Fellow 2025-26

Over 4,000 readers from 70 countries have accessed our blog in the last few years. Our seminars feature world-leading scholars of civil war and political violence, and our workshops engage scholars and practitioners.
We publish contributions from our Fellows on the Civil War Paths Blog and host a seminar series showcasing cutting-edge research by Fellows and broader networks. Other events will focus on the Civil War Paths project’s outcomes to date.

Fellows will receive a monthly newsletter with invitations to events and updates from the Centre.

Fellows will be required to:
– Attend our Seminar Series and
– Contribute to our Blog or Annual Conference.
American Political Science Association (APSA) •

Spring 2025-2026 - American Political Science Association (APSA)

The following students were named as 2025-2026 APSA Diversity Fellowship Program recipients during the spring 2025 application cycle. These fellows are currently in the first or second year of PhD programs in political science.



Chase Brown (she/her) is a first year PhD student at George Washington University and an alumni of Rice University, where she graduated cum laude with a double major in political science and Spanish, and a minor in African American politics. Currently she studies Amer...
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing •

ဒုက္ခသည်ဘဝမှ ပညာရှင်အိပ်မက် အကောင်အထည်ဖော်နေသူ By VOA Burmese

အမေရိကန်ပြည်ထောင်စုမှာရဖို့ခက်ခဲတဲ့ ပညာသင်ဆုကိုရလိုက်တဲ့အတွက် ပညာရှင်တယောက်ဖြစ်ချင်တဲ့ သူ့အိပ်မက်ကို အကောင်အထည်ဖော်နိုင်တော့မှာဖြစ်သလို ဆောင်းပါးရှင်တယောက်အနေနဲ့ နိုင်ငံတကာ သတင်းစာကြီးတွေမှာ မြန်မာ့အရေးဆောင်းပါးတွေ ဆက်ရေးသွားမယ်လို့ ဒီနှစ် Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship ပညာသင်ဆုရခဲ့သူ ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင်က ပြောပါတယ်။

ငယ်ငယ်က နွမ်းပါးတဲ့ဒေသတခုမှာကြီးပြင်းခဲ့လို့ ပညာကောင်းကောင်းသင်ခွင့်မရခဲ့ပေမဲ့ အမေရိကန်ပြည်ထောင်စုကို ဒုက္ခသည်အဖြစ်ရောက်လာတဲ့ နှစ်ပိုင်းအတွင်းမှာပဲ B.A ဘွဲ့ယူနိုင်ပြီး မကြာခင်မှာတော့ ထိပ်တန်းတက္ကသိုလ်ကြီးတခုမှာ Ph.D ဘွဲ့သင်ယူတော့မယ့် ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင်ရဲ့ ဖြတ်သန်းမှုတချို့ကို မခင်ဖြူထွေးက စုစည်း တင်ဆက်ထားပါတယ်။

လွန်ခဲ့တဲ့ ၂ နှစ်ကျော်ကမှ ဒုက္ခသည်အဖြစ် ရောက်လာခဲ့တဲ့ ရခိုင်တိုင်းရင်းသားလူငယ် ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင်ဟာ သိပ်မကြာခင် လပိုင်းအတွင်းမှာတော့ အမေရိကန်ထိပ်တန်းတက္ကသိုလ်ကြီးတခုဖြစ်တဲ့ Cornell တက္ကသိုလ်မှာ နိုင်ငံရေးသိပ္ပံဘာသာရပ်နဲ့ Ph.D ပညာကိုသင်ယူတော့မှာပါ။ ခုလို အခြေအနေမျိုးကို သူ လွယ်လွယ်ကူကူ ရခဲ့တာတော့ မဟုတ်ပါဘူး။ https://burmese.voanews.com/.../kyaw-san.../7615384.html
VOA Burmese •

ခက်ခဲတဲ့ Paul & Daisy Soros ပညာသင်ဆုရသူ

အခြေခံပညာကို ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ် ပရဟိတကျောင်းတခုမှာ သင်ယူခဲ့ပေမဲ့ အမေရိကန်ကို ဒုက္ခသည်အဖြစ် ရောက်လာပြီး ၂ နှစ်ကျော်မှာ ရဖို့ခက်ခဲတဲ့ Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows ပညာသင်ဆုနဲ့ အမေရိကန် ထိပ်တန်းတက္ကသိုလ်ကြီးတခုမှာ Ph. D ဘွဲ့သင်ယူတော့မယ့် ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင်ကို မခင်ဖြူထွေးက မေးမြန်းထားပါတယ်။
Cornell Chronicle •

Kyaw Hsan wins Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Journalist Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, who exposed the realities of violence perpetrated by the military in his native Myanmar, has been awarded a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans to support his work toward a Ph.D. in political science at Cornell.

Kyaw Hsan is among the 30 immigrants or children of immigrants selected from more than 2,300 applicants for their drive, creativity, intellectual spirit and commitment to the values at the heart of the United States Constitution.
Department of Asian Studies •

Kyaw Hsan Hlaing Receives Soros Fellowship for PhD at Cornell University – Department of Asian Studies

Asian Studies BA student Kyaw Hsan Hlaing has been selected to receive a 2024 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. The fellowship will support him in pursuing a PhD in Political Science at Cornell University.

On track to graduate in Summer 2024, Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is not your typical undergraduate student. An internationally-acclaimed journalist and refugee from Myanmar, his studies were interrupted by poverty and violence. Upon arriving in the US already well known for his reporting
University of Hawaii at Manoa •

From refugee to scholar: Mānoa student wins competitive fellowship

A student who fled political persecution in Myanmar is on the brink of earning his BA from the Asian studies department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and has won a highly competitive fellowship to pursue a PhD. Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is one of 30 students, selected from nearly 2,400 applicants in the country, recently awarded the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which provides him $90,000 in funding for graduate school.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans •

Meet the Class of 2024

The 2024 Class of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows is made up of 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants from all over the country and world who are pursuing graduate school here in the United States. Selected from more than 2,300 applicants, each of the recipients was chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to the United States and will receive up to $90,000 in funding over two years.
University of Hawaii at Manoa •

https://manoa.hawaii.edu/undergrad/urop/student-feature-kyaw-hsan-hlaing/

Kyaw Hsan Hlaing (Asian Studies major) is not like most other UROP funding recipients. At the age of 26 and before receiving his undergraduate degree, he already has an extensive publication record encompassing dozens of news articles in international press outlets and a book manuscript under contract with the University of Hawai‘i Press. He is also a refugee from Myanmar who fled his home country after the February 2021 coup that gave rise to a bloody, ongoing civil war.
Insight Myanmar •

Rakhine Roulette (Emergency Edition) — Insight Myanmar

In the wake of Operation 1027, a joint military operation conducted by the Three Brotherhood Alliance— comprised of the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army— the state of the conflict in Myanmar has changed overnight. The operation involved coordinated attacks on multiple towns in northern Shan State and the Sagaing region, targeting the Myanmar Army, Myanmar Police Force and pro-military militia installations. The Three Brotherhood
Los Angeles Times •

L.A. Times Earns Sigma Delta Chi Awards from the SPJ for Cultural Criticism and Foreign Correspondence

The Los Angeles Times has received two Sigma Delta Chi Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. The awards, which recognize outstanding work in categories covering print/online, radio, television and more, were presented in a virtual ceremony on June 23.

Columnist Carolina A. Miranda received the award for cultural criticism, a new category this year, while Foreign Correspondent David Pierson, along with contributors Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, Hsiuwen Liu and Aie Balagtas See, were recognize
BBC News မြန်မာ •

ကိုဗစ် ဒု-လှိုင်းနဲ့ အင်တာနက် ဖြတ်တောက်မှုတွေကြား ဆုရ သတင်းသမား - BBC News မြန်မာ

၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် အတွက် လူ့အခွင့်အရေး စာနယ်ဇင်းဆုကို ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ် မြောက်ဦးမြို့က အလွတ် သတင်းထောက် ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင် ချီးမြှင့်ခံခဲ့ရပါတယ်။

ဟောင်ကောင် အခြေစိုက် သတင်းသမားအဖွဲ့၊ ဟောင်ကောင် နိုင်ငံခြား သတင်းထောက်များအသင်း နဲ့ လွတ်ငြိမ်းချမ်းသွားခွင့် အဖွဲ့ (ဟောင်ကောင်) တို့က ပေးအပ်တဲ့ ၂၅ ကြိမ်မြောက် လူ့အခွင့်အရေး စာနယ်ဇင်းဆုကို ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင် နဲ့ Emily Hannah တို့က ရရှိသွားတာပါ။

၂၀၂၀ ခုနှစ် နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၁၆ ရက်တုန်းက Times မဂ္ဂဇင်းမှာ ဖော်ပြခဲ့တဲ့ “ကမ္ဘာ့အရှည်ကြာဆုံး အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်ခံထားရတဲ့ ရခိုင်ပြည်သူများ” ဆောင်းပါးနဲ့ သူတို့ ဆုရရှိတာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

ဒီဆောင်းပါးကို ဘာကြောင့် ရေးဖြစ်ခဲ့တာလဲ ၊ လက်ရှိမြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ အင်တာနက် ဖြတ်တောက် ထားမှု အခြေအနေနဲ့ သတင်းသမားတွေ ဖမ်းဆီး ထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရတဲ့ အပေါ် သူ့သဘောထား တွေကို ကိုကျော်ဆန်းလှိုင်က ဘီဘီစီကို ပြောပြထားပါတယ်။
Society of Professional Journalists •

Winner of Sigma Delta Chi Awards - Society of Professional Journalists for Foreign Correspondence

The Society of Professional Journalists is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism.

Judges chose the winners from entries in categories covering print, radio, television and online. The awards recognize outstanding work published or broadcast in 2021.

Dating back to 1932, the awards originally honored six individuals for contributions to journalism. The current program began in 1939, when the Society granted the first Distinguished
Yale University •

Reporting during the world’s longest internet shutdown and the post-military coup in Burma | Council On Southeast Asia Studies at Yale

In this event, journalist Kyaw Hsan Hlaing will share his first hand experiences in reporting and human rights activism during the last two years of NLD’s term, gained while covering the civil war between the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group, and the Burma military under the world’s longest internet shutdown, imposed by the civilian government in his native state. Since the military coup on 1st February last year, his firsthand reporting also offers a window in public protests, the civil disob.....
The MacMillan Center •

CSEAS Seminar: "Reporting during the world's longest internet shutdown and the post-military coup in Burma"

For over 70 years, Burma has been struggling between Autocracy and Democracy and fighting in both non-violent and violent ways for democracy, equality, and greater autonomy for the ethnic states. After a recent period of hopefulness, the military overthrew Aung San Su Kyi’s NLD government on 1st February 2021. Since the coup, the country has been in political turmoil. Nationwide protests broke out, followed by a deadly crackdown by the junta which killed over 1700 people.

In this event, journalist Kyaw Hsan Hlaing will share his first-hand experiences in reporting and human rights activism during the last two years of NLD’s term, gained while covering the civil war between the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group, and the Burma military under the world’s longest internet shutdown, imposed by the civilian government in his native state. Since the military coup on 1st February last year, his firsthand reporting also offers a window in public protests, the civil disobedience movement, and human rights violations. The conversation will discuss how Burma’s unarmed civilians are being targeted, and journalists’ lives are being put in danger.
FortifyRights •

Myanmar Journalist Persists, Despite Death Threats

“As long as I am alive, I will work and keep going”

YANGON, May 3, 2021) – Four months after the coup, the Myanmar junta continues its bloody crackdown on anti-coup protesters, politicians, and media, with nearly 800 people killed and more than 3,000 arrested. In an effort to suppress information of ongoing human rights violations, the military junta shut down the internet and banned local media outlets from broadcasting coverage on mass protests and deadly attacks. On the ground, the Myanmar s
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