President
Nicholas COPPEL CSI, Honorary Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, Melbourne University
Nicholas Coppel is Honorary Fellow in Melbourne University’s School of Social and Political Sciences and a member of Diplomats Without Borders (https://www.diplomatswb.org), where he participates actively in its Myanmar Interest Group.
In his diplomatic career he was Australia’s Ambassador to Myanmar for four years (2015-2018), Deputy High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Deputy Ambassador to the Philippines and also served in Washington DC. From 2011-2013 he headed the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), an Australian-led regional peacekeeping and state building program of support to Solomon Islands following a period of ethnic conflict.
Since leaving the foreign service, Nicholas has published academic articles, book chapters and most recently co-authored the monograph, Myanmar’s Digital Coup – How the World Responded (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). The book is a critical analysis of how the international community is responding to Myanmar’s 2021 coup d’etat. In 2019, he co-curated Pictures of Transition – Contemporary Paintings from Myanmar (ANU School of Art and Design Gallery) and co-authored the exhibition catalogue.
His opinion editorials have been published in The Australian, AsiaLink Insights, the ASPI Strategist, Monash Lens and Nikkei Asia, and he is frequently interviewed for his insights including by Voice of America, BBC World Service, ABC 4 Corners, ABC Radio National, ABC TV’s The World, The Age and The Australian.
Nicholas holds a Bachelor of Economics from the Australian National University and a Master of Business Administration from the London Business School.
Vice-President
Prof Joseph Lo Bianco, AM, FAHA, is Professor Emeritus in Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne. He is an inaugural member, past Secretary and current Vice President of the Australia Myanmar Institute and a Past President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He recently received the 30th Ramon Llull International Prize for his effort in Australia and SE Asia on language rights and language policy. For many years he has worked with UNESCO and UNICEF in South and Southeast Asia on multilingual education, indigenous rights and access to education, literacy, girls’ education, and multiculturalism. He designed and managed the UNICEF Language, Education and Social Cohesion Initiative in Malaysia, Myanmar/Burma, and Thailand which resulted in several advances for ethnic rights in the countries and extended to the preparation of a Peace Building National Language Policy in Myanmar. A climax of this was the first Myanmar conference on multilingual policy, held at the University of Mandalay in 2016 with 350 delegates and a national summit at Naypyidaw hosted by the First Lady (Daw Su Su Lwin), Minister for Education, and Minister for Ethnic Affairs. Under UNESCO he has conducted Asia-wide policy workshops for senior policy officers and ministers of education across the Asia Pacific. He was author of the National Policy on Languages in Australia in 1987, widely regarded as the first multilingual comprehensive rights-based language policy. He has written extensively on language rights issues including in Myanmar.
Secretary
Ms Denise Nichols OAM
Denise Nichols has worked in international development, human rights, emergency response and disaster preparedness for over three decades. She is a humanitarian specialist and practitioner with experience in refugee and post conflict environments in Asia and the Pacific especially in Thailand, Myanmar, and Kosovo mainly working with Oxfam Australia and as an independent consultant with the Australian Government and a range of non-government agencies.
Denise has a long-standing interest in Myanmar since working as Burma Coordinator with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Bangkok in 1991-93. She was responsible for JRS’ humanitarian and advocacy response with communities in ethnic refugee and Burmese student camps on the Thai-Burma border and supported political asylum seekers in Bangkok following the 1988 uprising in Burma.
Since the military coup in 2021 Denise has been engaged as a Practitioner Affiliate at the Initiative for Peacebuilding at Melbourne University where she specialises in Myanmar, creating spaces for confidential and public dialogue around conflict resolution in Myanmar, humanitarian assistance including Covid response, support for Independent Myanmar Media, building networks with the Myanmar diaspora in Australia and the wider Australian community. Denise attended the inaugural conference of the Australia Myanmar Institute held in Melbourne in 2013 and has been actively engaged with AMI since. She is also engaged with the Myanmar Campaign Network and the Myanmar Diaspora to restore peace and democracy to Myanmar. Denise has extensive experience in governance in the not-for-profit sector, holding positions of Chair, Deputy Chair and Board Director in a range of organisations. She is currently a Board Director of Library for All, a subsidiary of Save the Children Australia.
Treasurer
Philip J Watts, Private Sector
Philip Watts has an extensive business and marketing background and is presently a business consultant. He has conducted business in a number of industries in a wide range of Asian countries over the past 35 years. He resides in Melbourne and has a deep interest in Myanmar and the country’s future. He attended the Australian Myanmar Institute Conference in Yangon in 2015 and is in close touch with businesses, education institutions, NGOs, local government agencies, and the Myanmar diaspora in Australia.
He is involved in a number of not-for-profit organisations including The Melbourne Sinfonia (Committee member) and Carlton Residents Association (Treasurer).
Other Board Members
Dr Thein-Thein Aye, MBBS, DMedSc
Thein-Thein received her medical education in Myanmar, where she engaged in day-to-day patient care and various clinical research projects at the Yangon General Hospital for eight years. She also worked as a research medical officer for the Department of Medical Research, Ministry of Health.
She obtained a Doctor of Medical Science degree from Nihon University School of Medicine in Japan before moving to Australia in 1994 as a post-doctoral fellow at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL), Fairfield Hospital where she undertook hepatitis research. She then joined the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) in 1997 as a medical scientist. Over her 23 years of service at NRL, Thein-Thein was the coordinator of several external quality assessment schemes and quality control programmes, promoting the quality of tests and testing for infectious diseases for laboratories across Australia and globally. She also acted as the International Liaison Officer and Sample Bank Coordinator during her later years at NRL.
Since her emigration in 1989, Thein-Thein has maintained close working relationships in Myanmar, allowing her to contribute to the health care, including providing technical support for major Myanmar health laboratories. She also served for three years in a voluntary capacity as the secretary for the Australia Myanmar Medical Association.
Prof Mark Considine, The University of Melbourne
Mark Considine is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. His research areas include governance studies, comparative social policy, employment services, public sector reform, local development, and organisational sociology. Mark is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (Victoria) and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. In 2015 he was awarded a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professorship.
Mark has been associated with governments and the community sector in the implementation of a number of recent projects and organisational reviews. These include:
• OECD LEED Program review of local partnerships
• Community Strengthening strategies at state and local level
• Premier’s Working Party of Strategic Partnerships with the Community Sector
• Minister’s reference group for the Review of the Local Government Act
• Communication and Marketing Review for Job Network
• Advisor on research strategies and organisational capacity at the Brotherhood of St Laurence
• Industry Reference Group, Employment Services Australia
• Active support for University programs relevant to Myanmar, including sponsorship of the Irrawaddy Literature Festival and programs concerning governance, heritage, education, health, and other issues of priority to the government, education institutions, and people of Myanmar.
Prof Susan Costello, Social Work at the Australian College of Applied Psychology (ACAP)
Susie Costello is an Adjunct Professor of Social Work from the Australian College of Applied Professions and Honorary Associate Professor of Social Work from RMIT University.
Susie has worked as a social work practitioner, educator and researcher. Her research focuses on international social work education. In consultation with refugees from Burma living on the Thai Burma border, she developed and taught a social work curriculum for health and community workers at the Mae Tao Clinic. She worked in Yangon as a consultant with UNICEF Child Protection, the Department of Social Welfare and the University of Yangon to develop a Graduate Diploma in Social Work and the beginning of a Child Protection system in Myanmar. As a member of the Refugee Tertiary Education Committee, she recruited the first batch of students from Myanmar to study online courses through Open Universities Australia. Susie led student study tours for RMIT students to the Thai Burma border, and to Myanmar in partnership with Action Aid Myanmar.
Dr Thet Htay, MBBS, MRCPsych (UK), FRANZCP, Central Queenland Health
Dr Thet Htay is currently working as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Central Queensland, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and a Member of the Royal College of psychiatrists (UK) and has decades of experience in Clinical Psychiatry. Dr Htay has a lifelong interest in world politics, history, and nature. He is passionate about freedom, and democratic movements globally. Since the Military coup in Myanmar, he has been actively involved in Spring Revolution movement along with Myanmar diaspora across the world.
Prof Paul Komesaroff, Monash University
Paul Komesaroff is a physician, researcher, and philosopher at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where he is a Professor of Medicine. He is also Executive Director of Global Reconciliation, an international collaboration that promotes communication and dialogue across cultural, racial, religious, political, and other kinds of difference, and President-elect of Adult Medicine in the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He is also an Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney and a board member of the Australia Myanmar Institute.
He is a practising clinician, specialising in the field of endocrinology (the study of hormones), at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. He is also Director of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine and Society, which undertakes educational and research work in relation to all aspects of ethics in relation to medicine, health care, and the sciences. He occupies or has occupied many roles in the fields of ethics and society, including Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (1995-2013, 2016-2017) and Deputy Chair of the Asia-Pacific Ethics Consortium.
He is involved in a wide range of teaching, research, and action projects in medicine and ethics. These spans a broad field, including the impact of new technologies on health and society, consent in research, the experience of illness, palliative care and end of life issues, complementary medicines, obesity, and cross-cultural teaching and learning. His international work covers the development of international teaching programs, reconciliation and healing after conflict and social crisis, the nature and impact of foreign aid, capacity building in global health, and evaluation of development and aid programs.
He is the Chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and Ethics Editor of the Internal Medicine Journal. He is the author of more than 400 articles in science, ethics, and philosophy, and author or editor of fourteen books, including Riding a crocodile: A physician’s tale (2014), Experiments in love and death: Medicine, postmodernism, micro ethics and the body (2008), Pathways to reconciliation: Theory and practice (2008), Objectivity, science and society (2nd ed.2009), Troubled bodies (1996), Reinterpreting menopause: Cultural and philosophical issues (1998), Drugs in the health marketplace (1994), Expanding the horizons of bioethics (1998) and Sexuality and medicine: bodies, practices, knowledges (2004).
Vanessa Luong
Vanessa is a third-year Politics and International Relations student at the University of Melbourne, specializing in global affairs, diplomatic relations, and human rights advocacy. She graduated from Wellington Secondary Colledge and Victorian School of Language (Chinese VSL), and possesses a multilingual skill in English, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, plus beginner-level Spanish.
Her volunteer experience includes contributions to the Australian Red Cross and Global Nomadic, where she supported initiatives addressing humanitarian crises and development projects. As a member of the Australia Myanmar Institute, Vanessa is dedicated to empowering grassroots organizations in Myanmar to combat violence and uphold human rights.
Vanessa is passionate about being a diplomat or a member of international organizations such as the United Nations, UNICEF, the Red Cross, ASEAN etc., with the aim of:
Engaging with diverse cultures and societal complexities
Fostering international dialogue; equitable and sustainable global relations
Advocating for peace, global justice, human rights, and conflict resolution.
Dr Michelle Aung Thin, RMIT University
Michelle Aung Thin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication, teaching in the discipline of Communication, Advertising and in the field of Creative Writing. She was born in Burma (as Myanmar was known then), leaving for Canada as an infant. She has a strong connection to Myanmar which is reflected in her work as a novelist, essayist and as a scholar.
Michelle is an expert in the cultural history of colonial mixed-race groups such as the Anglo-Burmese, Anglo-Indians, Zerbadi as well as Asian diaspora. She was the first Asialink creative resident to Myanmar, funded by Creative Victoria, where she developed strong, lasting relationships with local artists and writers, developing her knowledge of contemporary Myanmar literary production. She has taught courses in writing in Mandalay and Yangon, collaborating with local artists and translators.
Michelle is also an international award winning novelist. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Monsoon Bride (Text 2011), was shortlisted for the influential Victorian Premier Literary Awards as an unpublished manuscript. Her latest novel, Hasina (Allen & Unwin 2019), sold into the USA and Canada, where it was released as Crossing the Farak River (Annick, 2020) and won the Freeman Prize, the South Asia Book Award as well as being listed as an Outstanding International Book in the USBBY awards. Her writing is studied in Australian schools at middle-grade and VCE levels.
Dr Raymond Tint Way, FRANZCP, Burmese Medical Association Australia
Raymond Tint Way, a graduate of the Rangoon Institute of Medicine (I), is a Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and a Psychotherapist in private practice in Sydney, Australia.
He was Vice President of AMI from 2016 till 2024. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and holds a degree of Master of Medicine in Psychotherapy from the University of Sydney.
His special interests include PTSD, and the mental health of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, as well as people living under a totalitarian system. He worked as a VMO Psychiatrist in the Mood Disorders Unit at Northside Clinic in St Leonards, NSW, a private psychiatric inpatient facility affiliated with the University of Sydney.
He served as President of the Sydney-based Burmese Medical Association Australia (BMAA), which received AusAID sponsored Australian Award Fellowships for Myanmar Medical Professionals in three consecutive years (2012-2014) in collaboration with the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and Monash University.
He is an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry, both at the Medical University (I ) and ( II ), Yangon, Myanmar.
He has published in the areas of psychopharmacology, cross-cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA), Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (ANZJP), and The Self in Conversation (ANZAP publications).
In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, he trained several Burmese speaking general practitioners and nurses in Sydney who carried out “Psychological First Aid” and a pilot psychosocial project in the disaster-affected Ayeyarwady Delta of Myanmar in collaboration with Myanmar psychiatrists.