Erin Kamler (born 1975) is an American writer, composer, and academic researcher who works at the intersection of feminist social justice and the arts.
Dr. Erin Kamler is an American writer, composer, musician and academic researcher who works at the intersection of feminist social justice and the arts. Over the past eleven years, Erin has worked as a researcher and gender equality consultant with numerous international development agencies, NGOs and civil society organizations in Burma, Thailand, and throughout Southeast Asia. Source
A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Erin earned her Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where her research focused on the trafficking and migration of women in Thailand and Burma, and using the arts as a tool for political communication and human rights witnessing. Conversationally fluent in the Thai language, Erin holds a Masters in Public Diplomacy from USC's School of International Relations, a Masters in Communication Arts from USC's Annenberg School and a Bachelors in music composition from Sarah Lawrence College.
Recent projects as a composer and playwright include Foreign, Andaman, Land of Smiles, Divorce! The Musical, and Runway 69. Her work has been staged at New Dramatists, Berkeley Rep, The Public Theater, Playwright's Horizons, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and she is a three-time winner of Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwright's Festival and University of Michigan's Hopwood Award. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Erin divides her time between Thailand and the United States, where she serves as an Affiliated Researcher at Chiang Mai University and Academic Program Director at Minerva Project and Visiting Professor of Arts and Humanities at Minerva University. She is currently working on a series of musicals, THE MONSOON TRILOGY, about human rights issues in Southeast Asia. Source
Recording and performance
As a recording artist, Erin has performed in India, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Turkey, Thailand and throughout the United States with her albums: The Street Is Not A Woman (1998), Mantra Girl: Truth (2002), Mantra Girl: Trinity (2005) and Kundalini Yoga Instructional DVD's (2003). Her music can be heard on numerous albums and films.
Academic projects
Kamler. Erin M. (2019). Rewriting the Victim: Dramatization as Research in Thailand’s Anti-trafficking Movement. New York: Oxford University Press. Kamler, Erin M. (2016). Performing Land of Smiles: Dramatization as research in Thailand's antitrafficking movement. International Journal of Communication 10 (2016), 3666–3688. Kamler, Erin M. (2015). Women of the Kachin conflict: Trafficking and militarized femininity on the Burma-China border. Journal of Human Trafficking, 1:3, 209-234, DOI: 10.1080/23322705.2015.1014664. Kamler, Erin. (2014). "Trafficking and Coerced Prostitution in Thailand: Re-Conceptualizing International Law in the Age of Globalization." In Liamputtong, P. (ed.) Contemporary socio-cultural and political perspectives in Thailand. Springer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kamler, Erin Michelle. (2013). Toward a methodology of arts-based participatory action research: Evaluating a theatre of the oppressed classroom site. New Scholar: An International Journal of the Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences. 2 (1), 107-120. Kamler, Erin Michelle. (2012). Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo. International Journal of Communication 6. Negotiating narratives of human trafficking: NGOs, communication and the power of culture. (2012) Journal of Intercultural Communication Research. 1–18. London: Routledge. Kamler, Erin. (2012). "Anti-Trafficking Responses to Thailand's Tier 2 Watch List Status: Seeing Policy Through Women's Eyes" This report examines the effects of anti-trafficking policies on female migrant laborers in Thailand, and offers recommendations for building a prevention-oriented approach to trafficking. NGO narratives in the global public sphere. (2011). The International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations. Illinois: Common Ground. Wendy S. Hesford, Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms. (2011). International Journal of Communication 5. Thai nationalism and the crisis of the colonised self. (2010). The South and Southeast Asia Culture and Religion Journal.Vol. IV. pp. 98-112. National identity, the shan, and child trafficking in northern Thailand: The case of D.E.P.D.C. (2010). Shan and Beyond: essays on Shan Archaeology, Anthropology, History, Politics, Religion, and Human Rights. Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University.