Lada Phadungkiati, PhD student

Lada has her Bachelor Degree in Economics from Kasetsart University and a Masters Degree in Regional and Rural Development Planning from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). From June 2007 to May 2010, she worked for AIT as a project associate and researcher in different GMS related projects. These included the Greater Mekong Subregion Academic and Research Network (GMSARN); Gender, Cross-border Migrant Workers and Citizenship: A case study of the Burmese-Thai border; and Capacity Building for Gender, Poverty and Mobility Analysis of Road Transportation Development in GMS Region Project. Her last research project with AIT was the postgraduate research project named Socio-economic Impacts of GMS Economic Cooperation on Small-Scale Cross Border Informal Traders: A Case Study of Thai-Lao Border.

Lada commenced her PhD at the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, in July 2010. Her research project is looking at trade, particularly the social network of small-scale, cross-border traders in Thailand and Lao PDR. It examines the degree to which globalisation and regionalisation processes have created obstacles to the trade operations of small-scale, cross-border traders in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). In particular it explores changes in governance from less formal to more formal arrangements. It also looks at trade and social networks as strategies that local people can use to overcome difficulties created by macro tendencies.

Languages: Thai
Supervisor: Prof Philip Hirsch
Assoc. Supervisor: Dr Bob Fisher

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