Thant Myint-U

Thant Myint-U (Burmese: သန့်မြင့်ဦး [θa̰ɰ̃ mjɪ̰ɰ̃ ʔú]; born 31 January 1966) is a Burmese historian, writer, past fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, former adviser to the President of Myanmar, and the founder and chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust. He is the author of five books, including the bestselling and critically acclaimed The River of Lost Footsteps:A Personal History of Burma and Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia

He was named by the Foreign Policy magazine as one of the "100 Leading Global Thinkers" of 2013 and by Prospect as one of 50 "World Thinkers" of 2014.He was voted 15th in Prospect magazine's pollof the "World's Leading Thinkers"

Thant Myint-U was born in New York City to Burmese parents and is the grandson of former Secretary-General of the United Nations U Thant. He has three sisters. He is a Myanmar national.

Thant earned a BSc in government and economics from Harvard University, an MA in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins University, and his PhD in history from Cambridge University in 1996. From 1994-1999 he was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he taught Asian and British imperial history. He lectured extensively, including at Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, London University, the University of Chicago, and the Australian National University.

He has served on three UN peacekeeping operations. He first worked with the UN from 1992-1993, as a human rights officer in the UN Transitional Authority for Cambodia in Phnom Penh. In 1994 he was the chief spokesman for the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia, based in Sarajevo, and in 1996 was a political adviser in the Office of the UN's Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 2000, he joined the UN Secretariat in New York, working first in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and then in the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, becoming in 2004 chief of the Policy Planning Unit in that department.

During this time he was a member of the secretariat of the Secretary-General's Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (High Level Threat Panel) which produced "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility". In late-2005 and early-2006 he was briefly a senior officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General coordinating the establishment of the new Peacebuilding Commission, Peacebuilding Support Office, and the Mediation Support Unit, and other related reforms.

Aside from being chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust, he was from 2011-2015 a member of the (President of Myanmar's) National Economic and Social Advisory Council, and a special adviser to the Myanmar government for the peace process at the Myanmar Peace Centre, a senior research fellow of the Myanmar Development Resources Institute, a member of the Fund Board of the (Myanmar) Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund., and the vice chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for Southeast Asia. He has held visiting fellowships at Harvard University, the International Peace Institute in New York, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He was for many years a research associate of the Cambridge Centre for History and Economics, and is a research associate of the Cambridge Centre for South Asian Studies.

During a December 2019 book tour in the US, Thant expressed his forebodings about Myanmar's future. In an interview with Singapore's The Straits Times, Thant remarked that the threat of climate change made him pessimistic about the country's future. "I think whatever we think of the [Myanmar's] ledger in general, perhaps it comes to 50/50," he said. "When you add on what is almost certainly going to be the impact of global climate change on Burma, I think it's hard to be too optimistic right now."

Thant is married to Sofia Busch. He has a son, Thurayn-Harri.

Thant has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times the International Herald Tribune, the London Review of Books, the New Statesman, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Time and The Times Literary Supplement.He was awarded the "Asia Pacific Awards" (Asian Affairs Research Council and Mainichi Newspapers) "Special Prize" in November 2014 for Where China Meets India.. His latest book, The Hidden History of Burma was released in November 2019.

• Thant Myint-U (12 November 2019). The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century (1st ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1324003298.

• Thant Myint-U (18 September 2018). Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374533526.

• Thant Myint-U (8 January 2008). The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374531164.

• Thant Myint-U; Scott, Amy (14 September 2007). The UN Secretariat: A Brief History. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 978-0937722992.

• Thant Myint-U (26 March 2001). The Making of Modern Burma (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521799140.

• Fukuoka Prize (2015)
• Padma Shri (2018)