Sidney Fellow accepts visiting professorship at the University of Yangon

Sidney Fellow accepts visiting professorship at the University of Yangon.

Dr Janice Stargardt, College Fellow in Archaeology, and Professorial Fellow in the Historical Archaeology and Geography of Asia, has accepted an invitation as first Visiting Professor in the Archaeology of Burma and South East Asia in the Department of Archaeology, University of Yangon [Rangoon].

The post is endowed by the Open Society Foundations (funded by George Soros), who have previously supported the development of democratic institutions in Eastern Europe and now, in response to current openings, in Burma.

Janice Stargardt has published six books and monographs on South East Asian Archaeology, among them The Ancient Pyu of Burma. Volume 1, Early Pyu Cities in a Man-Made Landscape. Cambridge and Singapore, and is currently completing Volume 2, The Buddhist Archaeology of Sri Ksetra, due 2013.  Twenty-five of her fifty peer-reviewed research articles are on the archaeology of Burma, mainly the Pyu. Four were adopted as background papers for the UNESCO/Myanmar intiative to add the Pyu cities to the World Heritage List. Her publications on the Pyu are used as teaching texts in the University of Yangon and the Department of Archaeology Field Training School at Sri Ksetra [Prome].

Other research includes excavations in Thailand, 1971-96, on ancient settlements, rice cultivation and irrigation, and the spread of Buddhism from South-East India, to Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand along with maritime trade. She has previously held Visiting Professorships in sixteen European and Asian universities, and her work has been translated into Burmese, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Italian.

This is an archived news story, first posted in 2012.