This opening speech by ICBMS conference chair Chayan Vaddhanaphuti takes the occasion of commemorating a decade plus of the conference to set the broader context for ICBMS 5 by situating it within a focus on Myanmar’s prolonged political interregnum, following the 2021 coup. The empirical evidence presented at this conference documents the many challenges Myanmar faces, including violence, displacement, migration, environmental destruction, and economic crisis, while also highlighting examples of resilience, agency, and collective strength, such as new forms of organization and locally grounded responses to the crisis.

In this address Aj. Chayan will reflect on the role of the ICBMS today as an academic space not only for documenting the challenges, constraints and responses created by the current crisis, but also for providing a basis for discussing the way forward: how Myanmar might move beyond its current interregnum and what kind of political community might emerge from it. This includes bringing diverse perspectives together to develop shared imaginations and visions, identify common concerns and principles, and build forms of cooperation across differences. In this sense, ICBMS 5 seeks to connect diverse experiences and forms of knowledge and provide a space in which a shared political imagination of Myanmar’s future can begin to emerge.