Penelope Edwards

Penny Edwards is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, Walter and Elise Haas Professor of Asian Studies and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies. A cultural historian specializing in Burma/Myanmar, and Cambodia, her research and teaching interests iclude British and French colonialism, Buddhism and nationalism; the politics of exile; the visual and performing arts, and Chinese diaspora.

Her recent publications include “Inarguably Angkor” in Mitch Hendrickson, Miriam T. Stark and Damian Evans, Ed. The Angkorian World (2023), and the co-edited volume (with Alok Bhalla, ko ko thett, Kenneth Wong and Frank Stewart), “In the Silence: International Fiction, Poetry, Essays and Performance” Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writings, (Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press, 2023). Her translation of Cambodian philosopher Soth Polin’s controversial novel L’anarchiste is due out with Gazebo Books, Sydney, in 2025. Her second book Kingdoms of the Mind: Burma’s fugitive prince and the fracturing of empire is forthcoming with Columbia University Press. Her first book, Cambodge: the Cultivation of a nation, 1860-1945, was recipient of the 2009 Harry Benda Prize by the Association of Asian Studies.

Her undergraduate courses include SEA10A (now SEA101A) Cultures, Peoples and Polities of Southeast Asia; SEA175 Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia: Cultural Histories, Migrating Identities, SEA188 Southeast Asian Cinema: History, Memory, Politics and SEA190 Lovecraft: Epic Romance in Southeast Asia. Her teaching has been recognized with the 2013 Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentoring of GSIs, and the 2021 Carol D. Soc Graduate Mentoring Award.

In Spring 2025 she will teach the Graduate Seminar SSEASN C275, Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha: History and Modernity in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka (Fridays, 11am – 2pm, Room 342, East Asia Library)