"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Engaged Research: Reflections from Cambodian Forests."
▲ Speaker: Dr. Courtney Work
Associate Professor, Department of Ethnology, Department of Ethnology; National Chengchi University
▲ Date: 2024.02.27 1-3 pm
▲Venue: 701,7F, Biomedical Technology Building, Shuang Ho Campus, TMU.
▲Registration ─ Please contact me on Facebook Messenger.
Courtney Work is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnology at the National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Her research is focused in the rural areas, especially in regions transforming from forest to developed, settled landscapes. Areas of expertise and interest include the Anthropology of Religion, Development, and the Environment; the History of Southeast Asian political formations; and the Contemporary Political Economy of Climate Change. Specializing in Engaged Research Methods, topics include the interactions between humans and the non-human world in the context of changing environmental conditions with an emerging focus on socio-spatial relationships with plants, medicine, and free nature.
"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Engaged Research: Reflections from Cambodian Forests."
This talk will discuss engaged research as method and theory by introducing my long-term research experiences in Cambodia. After thirty years of war and instability punctuated by genocide, Cambodia’s forests have been fully assimilated into a market economy. This is true of the trees, waters, and rocks, as well as the human and other-than-human animals. The extent to which these changes are labeled ‘progress’ depends on who does the labeling. Kuy Indigenous activists and residents of the forest attempt to retain resource access as well as narrative legitimacy, and engaged research activities support their initiatives. This talk will introduce current and past research activities, through which a discussion of research methods and ethics will emerge. My goal is to complicate the ethical and methodological certainty of contemporary knowledge production and spark conversations about future possibilities.