Program description
In July 2019, the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development and the Mekong Land Research Forum will run its third week-long intensive summer school on land research in the Mekong Region. The purpose of the summer school is to equip participants with a research orientation relevant to the challenges of land governance in the Mekong Region. The summer school will cover key concepts, provide access to existing research outputs and bring together knowledge of current land issues. It seeks to strengthen individual and networked research that is geared towards secure access to land amongst the rural and urban poor.
The summer school will involve a mix of early-career academics, mid-level government staff and those working with civil society organizations in the six Mekong countries: Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The summer school program will be organised and run by regional specialists in land issues and will include a number of guest lecturers. Included in the summer school are:
- Pre-workshop assignments for participants to submit a one-page summary of their areas of interest in land issues, plus reading of relevant articles and review of other participants’ summaries;
- Elevator talks: participants present their research topics and ideas;
- Facilitator-led seminars on key land-related questions and literature in the Mekong Region;
- Lectures and practical exercises throughout the workshop;
- Lectures by invited speakers on key issues in research on land;
- Practical exercises on:
- searching and selecting key land-relevant literature;
- individual reading-based assignments: annotating key articles;
- group literature review exercise.
- Field program to experience some of the complex land issues in northern Thailand;
- Topic sharing and development by participants.
Key topics and concepts:
- Access and exclusion
- Dispossession and justice
- Responsible agricultural investment
- Customary tenure
- Transborder issues and regionalization
- Resource tenure
- Migration and labour
- Agrarian changes and peri-urban development
- Green agendas
- Marginalised groups e.g. ethnicity, gender
The one-week program is run in an intensive format and requires a good working knowledge of the English language and a professional interest in issues related to land governance.
The tentative timetable for the summer school is as follows:
Participants will need to arrive in Chiang Mai by the evening of Sunday 14 July and depart no earlier than the morning of Saturday 20 July
Scholarships
The Mekong Region Land Governance program will provide travel and accommodation support to participants from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Participants from Thailand and Yunnan/Guangxi in China will need to fund their own travel and accommodation costs, but all tuition and meal costs will be provided without charge.
To apply click here (Deadline 17 May), Summer school Facebook page here
Information meetings for the 2019 summer school on research Land Governance and land relations in the Mekong region click here