Amanda Flaim

Biography

Amanda Flaim is a political sociologist who uses ethnographic, participatory, and survey methods to understand problems and paradoxes in human rights policy and development programs in mainland Southeast Asia. Her research agenda attends to political tensions in statelessness eradication programs at local and international scales, and the effects of precarious status on health outcomes, educational attainment, (un)safe migration and land-use/land claims among indigenous and ethnic minority communities in upland Thailand, in particular.

In a new $1M initiative supported by the Luce Foundation, Flaim is collaborating with fellow MSU/JMC faculty and students, as well as artists, activists, UNESCO and leading faculty partners in Southeast Asia to interrogate and imagine inclusive ecological futures along the imperiled Mekong River and its tributaries.

Flaim is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University’s James Madison College of Public Affairs, and the Department of Sociology; and, she is affiliate faculty of the Asian Studies Center and the Center for Gender in Global Context.