Janjira Sombatpoonsiri is currently a research-oriented assistant professor at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, and an associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies.
Her research has focused on nonviolent activism and social movements in the context of democratization and autocratization, and recently digital repression. Her dissertation-turned-book is Humor and Nonviolent Struggle in Serbia (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2015). The modified Thai version of this book—published by Matichon Publishing—includes the case of the Thai pro-democracy group ‘Red Sunday’ and Poland’s ‘Orange Alternative.’ In addition, she has published journal articles in academic journals, including Global Change, Peace & Security, Journal of Peace & Policy, Journal of Resistance Studies, Asian Journal of Peace Building, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development and Journal of Civil Society (forthcoming), and several book chapters. She has published op-eds in several Thai and international press, including 101 World (in Thai), Opendemocracy.org, The Conversation Global, and International Politics and Society (IPS).
She is currently a member of the Civic Research Network (CRN) of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a board member for International Peace Research Foundation (IPRAF). In 2016, she was a research fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, and in 2017 a visiting fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in India. Between September and December 2020, she is an international visiting fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.