Creator
Sorpong Peou
Sorpong Peou is a Cambodian-born Canadian political scientist who lived through the Khmer Rouge regime and writes on peace, security and democracy in Cambodia.
Sorpong Peou is a Cambodian-born Canadian political scientist at Toronto Metropolitan University.[1] As of 2026, he is a full professor in its Department of Politics and Public Administration.[1] He lived through the Khmer Rouge regime before settling in Canada as a refugee, and his books include studies of the United Nations peacekeeping mission and democratization in Cambodia.[2][1]
From Cambodia to Canada
In an interview with the Voice of America's Khmer service (VOA Khmer), Peou said that he lived under the Khmer Rouge until the end, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978. In 1979 he went alone to the Thai-Cambodian border. He spent several months at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, then moved to a camp called Kamput and finally to a transit camp before leaving for Canada.[2]
He arrived in Canada in 1982. His plane landed in Montreal, and a few days later he was moved to Ottawa. After more than a year there he went back to school at the University of Waterloo, where he studied political science and peace and conflict studies, and then moved to Toronto for graduate work at York University.[2] He holds a bachelor's degree with honors from Waterloo and a master's degree and a doctorate from York.[1]
Academic career
Earlier in his career Peou was a professor of international security at Sophia University in Tokyo, a Canada-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Fellow and a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He chaired the political science department at the University of Winnipeg from 2010 to 2013. He joined Ryerson University, now Toronto Metropolitan University, in July 2013 and chaired its politics department from 2013 to 2016.[3][1] He has also served as president of Science for Peace, a group based at the University of Toronto.[1]
His university lists his research areas as peace and security, comparative politics and global governance, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific. As of 2026, he is executive editor of The Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, published by Seoul National University Press. In Cambodia he is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Peace and Cooperation and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute.[1]
Writing on Cambodia
Peou told VOA Khmer that he first went back to Cambodia in 1992, ten years after he left, to observe the United Nations peacekeeping mission as part of his research, and that he has returned often since.[2] His books include:[1]
- Conflict Neutralization in the Cambodia War: From Battlefield to Ballot Box (Oxford University Press, 1997)
- Intervention and Change in Cambodia: Towards Democracy? (St. Martin's Press, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Silkworm Books, 2000)
- International Democracy Assistance for Peacebuilding: Cambodia and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
- Human Security Studies: Theories, Methods and Themes (World Scientific and Imperial College Press, 2014)
In the VOA Khmer interview he called the end of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1998 the biggest positive development in Cambodia's recent history. He described Cambodia as a normal developing country. He said that its democratization began with the election the United Nations organized, ran into trouble in the mid-1990s, and had stalled since a violent confrontation around 1997.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Politics and Public Administration, Sorpong Peou, faculty page (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 VOA Khmer, Soksreinith Ten, Q&A: Interview with Professor Sorpong Peou: Cambodia's Culture of Retribution and Politics of Survival, the Setback for Democratic Liberalization (January 19, 2017)
- ↑ Cambodia Development Resource Institute, Sorpong Peou, profile (undated)