What a neighbourhood knows sample
On heritage work as a form of research, and on what is lost when a block is described only in the language of development.
Published work
Ideas & Publications
Essays, reports, lecture recordings, interviews, and reading lists. Most of what happens at the Commons is published afterwards, in Thai and English where we can.
Open call · closes 31 October 2026
Sam Yan Writing in Exile Prize
Exile does not silence literature, it relocates it.
With Sam Yan Press. Open to writers from Myanmar, including those living in exile and in diaspora communities — in Burmese, English, Karen, Kachin, Chin, Mon, Shan, Karenni, Rakhine, Rohingya, or other languages of Myanmar. One prize, three ways in: short story, essay, or poetry.
The winner receives
- Publication
- English translation
- A public reading in Bangkok
- Certificate and commemorative award
- A cash prize
The University and the City — full recording sample
The complete lecture and the hour of questions that followed.
Public space in Sam Yan: a working study sample
A first survey of shared space around the shrine and the market, prepared with residents.
A conversation on publishing, translation, and reading in public sample
Why a book in translation is a civic act, and what it costs to make one.
The Commons sample
A short documentary on the place, the people who keep it, and what it has come to stand for.
Cities, universities, and power: a starting list sample
Twelve books and essays we keep returning to, with notes on where to find them in Thai.
Nothing published under that type yet.
Sam Yan Press
The Institute works closely with Sam Yan Press, which has spent years making important books and ideas more accessible in Thai. Translation is not a side activity for us — it is how an argument reaches the people it concerns, and how writing that a government would rather not hear finds a publisher.
Read with us
Translation is how an argument reaches the people it concerns.
Supporting one translation puts a book into Thai, into libraries, and into the hands of students who would otherwise never meet it.