Speaker Profile & Topic of Interest # 3

Min Zin is pursuing his Ph.D. in the Political Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley.  He got involved in student activism early in his life when in 1988, as a 14-year-old high school student, a pro-democracy movement swept through Burma. He went into hiding in 1989 to avoid arrest by the military, and his underground activist-cum-writer life lasted for nine years until he fled across the Thai-Burma border in August 1997. Min Zin worked for the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, as an assistant editor. Shifting from print to radio journalism, from 2004 to 2007 Min Zin worked as an international broadcaster with the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (Burmese Service). He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Min Zin also worked as an instructor responsible for International Visiting Scholars' Program at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Journalism from 2008 to 2010. He serves as Burma’s country analyst for several research foundations including Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). His writings appear in The Irrawaddy, The Bangkok Post, Far Eastern Economic Review, Wall Street Journal, and other publications.