Editors’ Note

With this issue we complete the 20th volume of the Journal of Burma Studies. It comes at a particularly auspicious moment when the Center for Burma Studies is celebrating its 30th anniversary and a new democratically elected government has taken power in the country. The field of Burma Studies has grown rapidly in recent years, but we have also lost some valued colleagues and friends. This juncture offers an opportunity to reflect on both the successes of the past 20 years and the changes in the field that the Journal has helped to shepherd.

The Journal is the joint publication of the Center for Burma Studies, Northern Illinois University, the Trustees of the Burma Studies Foundation and the Burma Studies Group of the Association of Asian Studies. This year at the Burma Studies Group meeting at the AAS in Seattle, we had the sad opportunity to honor the memory of one of the founders of all three organizations: F.K. Leman/Saya U Chit Hlaing, and hear stories of the early days. The Center was founded in 1986, when a group of scholars at the AAS gathered to find an institutional home for a large donation of Burmese books and artworks. After discussions with a number of institutions, Northern Illinois University generously offered not only to establish and maintain the Center, together with a permanent director position, but also to display the art collection and house the library materials. The scholars formed a body of trustees, as the Burma Studies Foundation, to oversee and protect the donation and to help it grow. Over the subsequent three decades, the collections have expanded to become a key resource for scholars from around the world, and the Center and its biennial conferences have become a hub for all academics working on Burma.

The Journal of Burma Studies was founded as part of this mission in 1997, with Richard Cooler, then Director of the Center, as its first Editor. The Journal, published then by NIU’s Southeast Asia Publications, was under Richard’s leadership until Catherine Raymond became the Center Director on Richard’s retirement. Christopher Miller, then a graduate student at NIU, took over the editorial work for the Journal from 2004 to 2006. When he left, Alicia Turner took the helm in 2007 as Editor and has overseen the Journal since. Lilian Handlin offered Alicia a year’s hiatus in 2012–13 to finish her book and has remained as Co-Editor.

The Journal has seen a long line of generous professional assistants. Liz Denius has copyedited the Journal, maintaining the high quality of each issue for most of its tenure. And since 2009, Eunice Low has served as our production editor, ably liaising with the typesetters and printers to bring out beautiful issues on time. Beth Bjorneby, the decades-long administrative assistant for the Center who facilitated so much of the life of Burma Studies from behind the scenes, oversaw the finances and subscriptions, a job that Carmin Berchiolly has now valiantly taken over, bringing enthusiasm and new IT skills to the role. The Journal has also had the help of a long string of academic assistants: Thomas Patton, who began work as a PhD student at Cornell University in 2011 and continued until this year; Charlie Carsten, graduate student at Harvard University who has assisted the Journal since 2012; and our newest assistant, Siew Han Yeo, entering PhD student at the University of Toronto.

Lined up on the shelf, the history of the expansion of Burma Studies is attested by the growing thickness of each issue over two decades. The first year saw two issues, followed by just one issue per year for the next 14 years up to volume 15 (2011), with the exception of 2005–06 which saw a single double-length issue. Those first issues were originally only available to the small number of paper subscribers, most of whom were members of the Burma Studies Group or affiliated scholars. Under Alicia’s leadership, volume 13 (2009) saw a major change for the Journal, moving to publication by NUS Press at the National University of Singapore. That issue...