Biography

Jacques P. Leider is a historian specialising in Southeast Asian studies focusing on the early modern, colonial and contemporary history of Myanmar (Burma). 

He studied Burmese and Tibetan languages at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) and history at Paris IV Sorbonne University from 1981 to 1987. He taught history, geography and civics after training as a high school teacher in Luxembourg. His professional path alternated research in Southeast Asia and teaching commitment in his native country. 

From 1995 to 1999, he joined the Luxembourg ministry of Development cooperation and spent four years in Thailand teaching at the Department of Western languages of Chulalongkorn University and at Benjamarachalai and Satrivitthaya high schools. 

In 1998, obtained his doctorate at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales with a historical study of the kingdom of Arakan from the 15th to the late 17th c. CE. He became a member of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (French Institute of Asian Studies) in 2001. He lived and worked in Myanmar until 2006 and lay the ground of the EFEO's first research office in the country.  

After 2008, Jacques Leider was in charge of the construction of EFEO's new research library in Chiang Mai, inaugurated by HRH Princess Sirindhorn in 2011. 

He was counsellor at the Embassy of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg in Bangkok in 2013-14 and senior consultant at the office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Yangon in 2015. 

As head of EFEO's research centres in Bangkok and Yangon since 2017, il has been the scientific coordinator of CRISEA (Competing Regional Integrations in Southeast Asia), www.crisea.eu (2017-2021), an EU-funded research project under Horizon2020. 

Jacques Leider has published widely on the history of Arakan (Rakhine State) and pre-colonial Myanmar. He has also contributed his expertise to the process of classification of objects and sites of cultural heritage (UNESCO). Since 2012, he has participated in interviews and with his scientific production to the international debate on Rohingya issues and the Rakhine State crisis. The Globe and Mail, Canada's leading newspaper, referred to Jacques Leider as the "world's leading authority on the region's history" (May 2015).