Thant Myint-U

Dr Thant Myint-U is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University where he teaches international history and is writing a new book on the United Nations during the Cold War. He is also a UN Special Adviser on Humanitarian Diplomacy and a Senior Adviser to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.  

He was educated at Harvard and Cambridge, where he completed his PhD in history and was elected a Fellow of Trinity College. From 1992-1994, Myint-U served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations (in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia, including as the UN Spokesman in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War) and from 2000-2007 at the Secretariat in New York, including as Chief of Policy Planning in the Department of Political Affairs and a Senior Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General responsible for the 2005 World Summit.

From 2010-2021, Myint-U lived and worked in Burma (Myanmar), where he was a Member of the National Economic and Society Advisory Council, a Special Adviser to the Government on the peace process, the Founding Chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust, and the Chairman of U Thant House.  As the author of four award-winning books, including, most recently, The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 as one of the "100 Leading Global Thinkers" of the year and in April 2014 by Prospect Magazine's as one of 50 "World Thinkers".  

He is a recipient of the Fukuoka Grand Prize from the government of Japan (2015) and the Padma Shri, one of India's highest civilian honours, from the President of India (2018).