My research explores the political economy of violence, conflict and development, and engages
specifically with the relationship between illicit economies and processes of state-building and
peace-building in borderland and frontier regions with a primary focus on Myanmar’s borderlands
with China. I completed my PhD on this subject in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS
in 2016 and I am now a Co-Investigator on a £7 million research project entitled 'Drugs and
(dis)order: Building sustainable peacetime economies in the aftermath of war’, which focuses on
Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar.
Publications
Drugs and extractivism: opium cultivation and drug use in the Myanmar-China borderlands
Meehan, Patrick and Dan, Seng Lawn, 2024, Journal of Peasant Studies (51), 4, pp 922-959
Critical policy frontiers: The drugs-development-peacebuilding trilemma
Goodhand, Jonathan, Meehan, Patrick, Bhatia, Jasmine, Ghiabi, Maziyar and Gutierrez Sanin, Francisco, 2021, International Journal of Drug Policy (89), 103115
Development Zones in Conflict-Affected Borderlands: The Case of Muse, Northern Shan State, Myanmar
Meehan, Patrick, Aung Hla, Sai and Kham Phu, Sai (2021). In: Chettri, Mona, (eds.) and Eilenberg, Michael, (eds.), Development Zones in Asian Borderlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
Drugs, local politics and the subversion of global counter-narcotics ideology in Burma’s eastern borderlands, 1988-2012
Meehan, Patrick (2015). In: Charnoz, Olivier, (ed.), Local Politics, Global Impacts: Steps to a Multi-Disciplinary Analysis of Scales. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, pp 79-104
Brokering the margins: A review of concepts and methods
Meehan, Patrick and Plonski, Sharri (2017). London; Bath: (Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka and Nepal: War to Peace Transitions viewed from the margins Working Paper No.1)
A state built on sand: How opium undermined Afghanistan, David Mansfield. London: C. Hurst and Co.2016. Pp. xviii + 352. £25 (pb). ISBN: 978‐1‐84904‐568‐1
Meehan, Patrick (2017). Journal of Agrarian Change (17) 4, pp 789-792
