Thiesmeyer, Lynn

Through her Sustainable Development Graduate Project at Keio, Lynn Thiesmeyer and her postgraduate students work with community projects sponsored by governmental, academic, private sector, and charitable organizations in Thailand, Laos, China, Cambodia, and Myanmar. She worked under the Digital Asia project at Keio University to develop online tools for mapping and analyzing current data on cross-border migration in the GMS, and with Keio’s Environmental Innovators Program on rural environmental issues in Southeast Asia. In 2005 she was a rapporteur for the United Nations’ Expert Group Meeting of the Division for the Advancement of Women, revising the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. She has organized and moderated videoconferences for the World Bank, the United Nations University, and research institutions throughout Asia on global policy and development. She also serves as a Vice-President of the Myanmar Environmental and Economic Research Institute.

Dr. Lynn Thiesmeyer specializes in Upper Mekong regional and rural development (Thailand, Laos, southern China). She was Professor of Environmental Information at Keio University until 2022 and is currently Senior Researcher at the Keio Global Research Institute. She participated in research with the Asia-Pacific Economic Commission, with the United Nations Development Programme, and was Research Advisor to the Mekong Institute of Thailand. She has been a lecturer for United Nations Global Seminars in Japan and at the Graduate Program of Health Social Sciences of Mahidol University of Thailand. Her publications include Human Insecurity in East Asia (2009), Informal and Illegal Movement in the Upper Greater Mekong Subregion (2010), and articles and book chapters on Environmental Policy within ASEAN and socio-ecological impacts of large-scale development projects in rural areas of Asia. Recent work includes on the region’s border economies and digital connectivity; on mobile and migrant labor’s digital, health, and human network resources; and the importance of low-tech and analog-digital hybridity in migration, medical emergencies, and disasters.

• Southeast Asia, Rural Development, Rural Environment, Socio-economic Surveys
• /Southeast Asia, Rural Development, Rural Environment, Socio-economic Surveys

Sociology / Southeast Asia, Sustainable Development, Socio-ecological Systems, Rural development

Issues faced by Rural Areas in the Greater Mekong Subregion under Globalization