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)
