Speakers: Tin Htar Swe OBE and Kiran Grewal

Tin Htar Swe OBE is a former BBC journalist covering Myanmar (Burma) and Asia Regional Affairs for three decades (1988-2017). Originally from Myanmar, she joined the BBC World Service in 1988 as a broadcast journalist for the BBC Burmese and travelled extensively in the region covering Burma-related events. She was appointed Head of BBC Burmese in 2003 and Head of South Asia Hub in 2011 overseeing six South Asia languages. Tin Htar Swe successfully expanded audience reach by making the BBC Burmese output available on digital platforms. In 2013 BBC Burmese has become the first international media organisation in Burma/Myanmar to deliver news on the mobile platform and in the same year the BBC also opened a news bureau in Burma/Myanmar. BBC Burmese service won several awards for the coverage of major Burmese events during her tenure. She retired from the BBC in 2017 and currently working as an independent Burmese analyst.

Kiran Grewal is a reader in sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London where she convenes the MA in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice and is the co-director of the Unit for Global Justice. She is the author of two books: ‘The Socio-Political Practice of Human Rights: Between the Universal and the Particular’ (Routledge 2016) and ‘Racialised Gang Rape and the Reinforcement of Dominant Order: Discourses of Gender, Race and Nation’ (Routledge 2017).

Kiran has been working in Sri Lanka for eight years on a range of human rights related issues. Currently she is engaged in a collaborative activist research project focused on building critical democratic communities and new social imaginaries in post-war Sri Lanka.