Frances O'Morchoe

Research Topic

Borderland peoples and the making of the Burma's Borders with Thailand and China, 1880-1950

Supervisor: Kevin Fogg

My research interests are in the history of borderlands in northern Burma. My thesis looks from a transnational perspective at the making of Shan State's borders with southwest China and northern Thailand from 1880 to 1950. I am interested in the Shan highlands as a resource frontier in the late nineteenth century, and particularly how people like the Lahu and the Wa were at the interface of contests for resources. I also write about the transnational opium trade, including the League of Nations’ role in eradication campaigns in the early twentieth century. My research uses sources from the Myanmar National Archives, the India Office archives in London, and missionary archives in the US and Thailand.

I am a convenor of the ‘International History of East Asia’ graduate seminar. I also co-organised an interdisciplinary China Humanities graduate conference at the University of Oxford China Centre in January 2018, called ‘Engaging “China”: Perspectives from the Margins’.

I received an undergraduate degree in History at the University of Edinburgh followed by an MPhil in Historical Studies at the University of Cambridge. I began my DPhil in 2015 at Somerville College, funded by the AHRC.