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Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, Loughborough University London, Loughborough University

Ronan Lee is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at Loughborough University London and the author of “Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech” (Bloomsbury/IB Tauris). His work focusses on Asian politics, genocide, hate speech and migration. In 2021 Ronan was awarded the Early Career Emerging Scholar Prize by the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Ronan has been awarded a 2024-2026 Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship to undertake a research project titled "Surviving Genocide: Rohingya Refugees’ Priorities for a Post-Genocide Future". This research will be situated in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh adjacent to the Myanmar frontier and will involve in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, discourse analysis and observation to map Rohingya attitudes towards education, marriage, work, language, justice, religion, migration/repatriation and politics. Through the 'Rohingya Futures' project that he initiated, Ronan publishes books of poetry by Rohingya authors.

He was formerly a Queensland State Member of Parliament and served on the frontbench as a Parliamentary Secretary in portfolios including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Justice and Youth, and has been a Visiting Scholar at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Law and the International State Crime Initiative.

Ronan’s doctoral research involved conducting long-term field work in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand during 2014-2017 focussed on the identity, history, and politics of the Rohingya. This work aimed to amplify the voice of Rohingya participants and involved in-depth interviews with Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, in Yangon, in the Bangladesh camps, and among the Rohingya diaspora living further afield from Myanmar. Ronan won Deakin University's 2015 Neil Archbold Memorial Medal for his journal article "A Politician, Not an Icon: Aung San Suu Kyi's Silence on Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya" in the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

Experience

  • 2022–present
    Vice-Chancellor Independent Research Fellow, Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University London
  • 2019–2021
    Visiting Scholar, International State Crime Initiative, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Education

  • 2019 
    Deakin University, PhD
  • 2013 
    Monash University, Master of International Relations
  • 2000 
    University of Queensland, Bachelor of Arts

Publications

  • 2023
    'Starving the Rohingya Back to Myanmar is a Crime Against Humanity', Global Asia
  • 2021
    'Myanmar’s Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA): An Analysis of a New Muslim Militant Group and its Strategic Communications', Perspectives on Terrorism
  • 2021
    Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech, Bloomsbury I.B. Tauris
  • 2019
    'Extreme Speech in Myanmar: The Role of State Media in the Rohingya Forced Migration Crisis', International Journal of Communication
  • 2019
    'Myanmar's Citizenship Law as State Crime: A Case for the International Criminal Court', State Crime Journal
  • 2019
    'Heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: legal and illegal iconoclasm', International Journal of Heritage Studies
  • 2016
    'The Dark Side of Liberalization: How Myanmar's Political and Media Freedoms Are Being Used to Limit Muslim Rights', Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
  • 2016
    'Pathway to peaceful resolution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State', Forced Migration Review
  • 2014
    ‘A Politician, Not an Icon: Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence on Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations