Dr. Pichamon Yeophantong has many years of experience bridging science and policy, especially in the Mekong Region. At the Mekong Environmental Resilience Week 2024 in October, she presented insights on how researchers can better impact policy and development to build climate resilience.

In this conversation, she emphasized her dual identity as a “pracademic,” blending academic rigor with practical policy work. She underlined the challenge of bridging the gap between science and policy: “It always feels like an uphill battle, where no matter what you write, how you frame the issue or the language that you use, you always feel like there’s some sort of barrier standing in the way.”

This persistent challenge, however, has motivated her to make her research more accessible and impactful.

A vital topic of the conversation was policymaking’s “black box” nature. Despite the demand from policymakers for empirical evidence, the ultimate use of this information often remains unclear to researchers.

Dr. Pichamon remarked, “As an academic, you don’t always know how your work will get used…having empirical evidence that’s verifiable be made as upfront as possible is so important.”

She stressed the importance of clear and ethical communication of scientific findings to prevent manipulation or misinterpretation.