Doing Research in Cambodia: Making Models that Build Capacity (original) (raw)

2016, Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace

Cambodia remains a developing country with a poor research environment, due in part to Khmer Rouge destruction of scholars and academic infrastructure in the 1970s and the many subsequent years of rebuilding riddled with political and social instability. Further, contemporary political exigencies create an environment of fear and mistrust that discourages the public from open participation and hampers productive research. The research seeks a comprehensive mapping of the research environment in Cambodia from detailing the policy framework to registering the needs of individual researchers. Our key questions: What and how research is being done, by whom, for what purpose, and with what resources? With the support from the Global Development Network and the ‘Doing Research’ peer review workshop, a research team from the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP) undertook a one year action research study to capture – and to help transform – the current state of Cambodian research. In early 2015, a roundtable of experts created a list of 25 institutions to interview, including both rural and urban universities (president, senior academic staff, faculty members, researchers, and students), NGOs, think tanks, donor representatives, and government ministries. Our bottom-up approach focused on giving voice to participants and achieving practical problem-solving outputs. It aimed to reduce dependence on donors in the long term by strengthening the endogenous capacity of the research community and improving collaborations between researchers. Our findings show that the primary impediment to research is insufficient funds for research, training, and dissemination. The government cannot adequately fund projects necessary to guide policy decisions, as even the national census is donor financed. Furthermore, instructors and students are generally responsible for funding their own projects. Since universities are tuition-driven, instructors are given little time or money to conduct research. This implicitly communicates that research is a non-critical afterthought. Respondents admitted that many staff lack the ability to conduct research, while dissemination activities are limited. Researchers commonly present findings at academic workshops. Therefore findings, embedded in reports, often overly technical and written in English, remain largely inaccessible to wider audiences. English proficiency proved another obstacle, preventing many Cambodian researchers from conducting literature reviews and increasing their workload when translating results for publication. With few academic publications, no accessible research database, and insufficient provincial libraries, research outreach is severely limited. And, since reports are written using technical English, it is unclear whom the research is targeting. Due to funding and human resource limitations, most research is dictated by donors, led by outside consultants, and financed on a short-term basis. Consequently, local capacity is stunted and short-term studies do not capture complex societal issues adequately. Donor institutions are often reticent to tackle controversial issues or report results without government consent. Cambodian research production is at a transitional stage. While we found general ambivalence toward research among older interviewees, younger Cambodians demonstrated a growing enthusiasm and receptivity. Few women participated in our study due to gender imbalance in senior positions. Equal opportunity policies and equal access to education are needed to reverse this trend. However, Cambodia is improving; as evidenced by the increasing number of female students in tertiary education.