Academic Activities

Cambodian Forum for Academic Initiative (CFAI)

Cambodian Forum for Academic Initiative (CFAI) offers Cambodian students and researchers, as well as non-Cambodian researchers on Khmer studies, in Japan, an open forum to share their views, research results, research plans, and other academic experiences with each other on a periodical basis. The CFAI operates in both regular and irregular sessions and each session will be mainly organized by an Organizing Committee of three members. The regular sessions will be held twice a year for students and researchers who are going to submit their dissertations, papers, research proposals and reports to their affiliated departments of the University or other academic institutions, and the irregular sessions will be held as many times as necessary and administratively feasible in response to the needs of Cambodian intellectual community in Japan. Anyone, who wants to share his or her knowledge and experience in research and study in this CFAI, can contact any member of the Organizing Committee [Mr. Kuong Teilee (teilee@law.nagoya-u.ac.jp), Mr. Phin Sovath (sovathphin@yahoo.com), Mr. Heng Dyna (nash_heng@yahoo.co.jp)].

Khmer Seminar

Khmer Seminar (Khmer Semi) is a rather formal seminar co-founded by a group of Cambodian students of Nagoya University in October 2005 with the main purpose of building up “Academic and Social Capital” among Cambodian students in Nagoya City. It aims at providing an opportunity to both old and fresh Cambodian students in Nagoya to present their research findings and/or other interesting topics so that they can exchange ideas and comments by using their critical thinking. Then, their ways of thinking, values, and morale can be judged and improved for the next round of presentation and for the future of their academic life. According to the internal rules, all Cambodian students are welcome to join as a member of the seminar. In each semester, each member takes turn doing presentation on the topic of his/her interest, and he/she is obliged to be a moderator before his/her turn of presentation. To sum up, Khmer Semi is a productive gathering and forum for better Cambodian scholars based on its core values of “Discipline, Respect, Positive Academia, Cooperation & Coordination, Motivation, Creativeness, Innovation, Honesty, Punctuality, Tolerance and Professionalism”. The seminar is facilitated by a moderator who is currently Mr Ngoun Sethykun (ngoun_kun@yahoo.com).

Academic Talk

Academic Talk was initiated by a number of CSAN members who love to talk about their research, their papers, their readings, etc during frequent Friendship Dinner. Their primary purpose was just to get comments from their folks; but eventually they also found that this way helps them memorize what they were writing or reading and releases them from stress as well. It also creates a culture of sharing among friends. Noticing all these benefits, they decided to set it up as one of CSAN activities. The atmosphere in Academic Talk is not very formal. It lets people talk, discuss and debate in a friendly and relaxing way. The topic for talking is not strictly limited to the main talker’s field of research. He/She may choose one among what topics they feel interested and submit it to the Facilitator who will subsequently make appropriate arrangement. Though in principle it takes place twice a month, the schedule arrangement of Academic Talk is very flexible. It is usually fixed up based upon the number of people who volunteer to be main talker and upon the availability of the main talker as well as other participants. If you appear to know interesting topic and would like to talk it out and get feedbacks from our folks, please feel free to drop a word to the current Facilitator, Ms Ly Sopheap, through the following address: sopheap16@yahoo.com