“Becoming Paṇḍit: Religious Teachings, Diploma Politics, and Doctoral Education in Post-War Cambodia” by Dr Theara Thun | LKCF Visiting Fellow Seminar
Dear all,
You are cordially invited to a talk titled “Becoming Paṇḍit: Religious Teachings, Diploma Politics, and Doctoral Education in Post-War Cambodia” by Dr Theara Thun. Dr Thun has been appointed as the 2025-2026 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia and is currently in NUS serving his fellowship. This talk is organised by the FASS Research Division and the Department of History.
Date: 26th March 2026, Thursday, 2:30PM – 3:30PM
Venue: In-person at the FASS Research Division Seminar Room AS7 06-42
Chair: Dr Jennifer Estes (NUS Sociology and Anthropology)
Register: Click here
Light refreshments will be provided.
Becoming Paṇḍit: Religious Teachings, Diploma Politics, and Doctoral Education in Post-War Cambodia
The entire education system in Cambodia was destroyed, and the vast majority of its educated population were either killed or fled the country during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979). Since then, the higher education infrastructure has encountered numerous challenges, including a serious shortage of qualified teachers. Despite this, in recent years a very large pool of unqualified doctoral degree holders, popularly identified as paṇḍits, has emerged and includes politicians, businesspeople, and monks. This presentation examines this situation by discussing how higher education degrees have become an attractive source of social prestige, political control, and economic influence in post-war Cambodia. It also discusses how popular understandings of paṇḍit, which also carries religious, social, and political significance, has become a barrier to the promotion of academic merit within the country’s higher education system.
Theara Thun is the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, for Semester 2 of the 2025/2026 academic year. Dr. Thun’s research interests include intellectual history, ethnic politics, and educational reconstruction, with a particular focus on Cambodia and Southeast Asia. He is the author of two books, including Epistemology of the Past: Texts, History, and Intellectuals of Cambodia, 1855–1970 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2024), which received the 2026 Honorable Mention for the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. His articles have appeared in Critical Asian Studies, Asian Studies Review, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and Studies in Higher Education.