In July this year, alongside my Wind&Bones collaborator Will Buckingham I was invited up to Taipei where we ran a workshop at Shih Chien University with a group of students from Parami University, Myanmar.

The students were at the very start of a two-week field trip to Taiwan. I’d worked with many of the students before, but this was my very first chance to meet some of them face-to-face.

As this was the beginning of the students’ visit, we focussed on the practice of writing and its role in the research process. We talked a lot about ethnography, the tensions inherent in participant observation (in some contexts at least, the more we are observers, the less we are participants, and vice versa), and how to develop rich field notes. Hannah talked about her experience of creative writing research, while Will discussed his fieldwork in Indonesia. We also talked about how to think and write across and between cultures.

We did three quick-fire writing exercises, exploring People, Places and Perspectives, working with students to develop the habit of closer attention, and the habit of recording fleeting experience before it is lost.

Currently, students from Myanmar are undergoing severe difficulties with the breakdown of infrastructure, the ongoing violence of military rule, and a newly implemented forced-conscription law. It was a privilege to work with these remarkable young people in Taipei. Their courage, talent, and creativity is one reason that there is hope for a better future for Myanmar.