Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is a PhD student in the department of government at Cornell University and a 2024 recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. He studies comparative politics with a focus on regime change, political violence, authoritarianism, and rebel politics. Before enrolling at Cornell, he resumed his undergraduate studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in January 2023—following a seven-year hiatus from his studies at Yangon University of Distance Education at Sittwe University—and received his BA in Asian studies in July 2024 with high academic distinction. Prior to his academic pursuits, Kyaw Hsan worked as an independent journalist and analyst, reporting on armed conflict, the military coup, protest, and human rights violations in Myanmar for a range of international media outlets, including TIME Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat Magazine, and Al Jazeera. At Cornell, he is a graduate affiliate of the Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) and serves as the SEAP Representative for Graduate Education and Training in Southeast Asia (GETSEA), a consortium aimed at enhancing graduate education in Southeast Asian studies across North America.
The APSA Diversity Fellowship Program, formerly the Minority Fellowship Program, was established in 1969 as a fellowship competition to diversify the political science profession. The DFP provides support to students applying to, or in the early stages of, a PhD program in political science. APSA has once again awarded a new cycle to provide support for students currently in their first or second year as of Spring 2025. Please join us in congratulating the 2025-2026 class of fellows.
- Learn more about DFP at https://apsanet.org/dfp
- Meet the 2025-2026 class of DFP Fellows