Piyada Chonlaworn is a Visiting Scholar at SEAP for the fall semester. She is currently a professor of Thai and Thai language studies at Tenri University in Japan. 

Her research interests include the maritime history of East and Southeast Asia, the history of Patani kingdom and the social and intellectual history of Thailand during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among her works is a book chapter in The Maritime Defence of China: Ming General Qi Jiguang and Beyond (Springer 2017), as well as monographs on the history of the southern Thailand, including Prawatsat Thi Thuk Lum: Patani, Yala, Narathiwat Nai Yuk Ched Huamuang (Forgotten History: Patani, Yala, Narathiwat in the Seven-States Era, Thammasat University Press, 2020, in Thai). 

Apart from history, she has worked on transnational labor migration from Southeast Asia to Japan. Her monographs on this topic include, “Cheap and Dispensable: Foreign Labor in Japan via the Technical Intern Training Program” (JSN Journal, 2021). Chonlaworn is currently working on growth, bloom and fall of Thai journalism and socialist writing as part of Southeast Asian intellectual and literary history. At Cornell, she will study archival information on Thai early newspapers and magazines housed in the Kroch Library Asia Collections and hopes to share her research expertise and collaborate with SEAP community.