Philippe Peycam is the director of the International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands. Educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Peycam is a trained historian whose recent book (The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon 1916-30, Columbia University Press, 2012) traces the origins of a Vietnamese public culture of contestation during the colonial occupation. For 10 years, he worked as founding director of the Center for Khmer Studies, Siem Reap and New York, an academic and capacity building organization in Cambodia and a hybrid transnational institutional model. From 2010-2011, he was a United States Institute of Peace’s Jenning Randolph Fellow. Since 2009, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. Peycam is working on a book provisionally entitled: Cultural Renewal and Social Ruins: Reflections on Post-Conflict Cambodia.