Sampan’s Speaker Series brings together writers, historians, artists and activists to explore the stories that shape Myanmar, India and Bangladesh. These are conversations about people and places, memory and identity — unfolding over drinks, dinner, and good company.

Our previous events included author Abir Mukherjee speaking about the heritage of British and Bengali detective fiction, Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent on her travels in the Naga Hills, Sam Dalrymple on the partitions that made modern Asia, and K.S. Nair exploring the Bangladesh 1971 Liberation War in the context of the Cold War. What connects each talk is a desire to look closer and ask questions.

For our Speaker Series events in Yangon, we offer a certain number of free tickets to Myanmar youth. Let us know if you think you are eligible and would like to attend an event.

Contact us for more information and check below for upcoming events.

Dr Robert Lyman: “Rangoon & WW2”

Tuesday 3 February 2026 – Yangon

“By 4 March, Rangoon was a city of the dead. Fires began to fill the night sky in the residential areas, where bands of hooligans looted the houses of the wealthy and set them ablaze when they had taken what they wanted. The press photographer George Rodger wandered through the blazing suburbs, revolver in hand, to see whole streets alight. In one place a temple wall had collapsed, and a row of twenty Buddhas, twelve feet high, glowed red-hot against the darkness …”

Military historian and author Rob Lyman joins Sampan in Yangon to explore the city’s pivotal role during the Second World War. Once a thriving colonial port, Yangon (then Rangoon) became a crucial battlefield, a place of evacuation and occupation, and a symbol of the shifting fortunes of empire in Asia.

In this talk, Rob traces the dramatic events of 1942, when British and Commonwealth forces were driven out of Burma, and the city fell to the Japanese. Drawing on his extensive research and fieldwork, he examines how the war transformed Yangon’s landscape and its people — from the chaos of the exodus north to the resilience of those who remained.

A former British Army officer and one of the leading historians of the Burma Campaign, Rob brings deep insight and humanity to a story often overshadowed by other theatres of war. His talk offers a rare chance to see Yangon through the lens of those turbulent years — and to reflect on how the war continues to shape the city today.

Rob leads Sampan’s Forgotten War Tour and Beyond the Chindwin WW2 tours.

RSVP with amy(at)sapantravel.com