Courtney Wittekind is a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology and a Harvard-Mellon Urban Initiative fellow. Her doctoral research pursues two lines of inquiry linked to urban development and economic insecurity in contemporary Myanmar (Burma). The primary component is an ethnographic study of the politics of planning amidst uncertainty in southwest Yangon, a region undergoing rapid transformation as a result of the ambitious New Yangon Development Project, which aims to extend the city’s limits by over 20,000 acres. A second avenue of inquiry probes Myanmar’s broader political transition, proposing that local responses to the delays and deferrals of a large-scale, state-led development project may reveal related stances toward nascent reforms, with the pursuit of a “new nation” and a “new city” experienced as intimately interlinked. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Harvard’s Committee on General Scholarships. 

In addition to her dissertation research, Courtney is currently completing her first documentary film in connection with Harvard’s Critical Media Practice program and the Sensory Ethnography Lab. She also serves as a founder and editor of Tea Circle, an academic forum for new perspectives on Burma/Myanmar.

Prior to beginning her PhD, she completed an MPhil at the University of Oxford as a 2014 Rhodes Scholar and member of St Antony’s Programme on Modern Burma Studies. She holds an interdisciplinary degree in anthropology and fine art from Carnegie Mellon University. 

Project: Urban Development, Social Media, and Speculation in Peri-Urban Yangon