Isaac Lyne

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Institute for Culture and Society
Western Sydney University
Sydney, Australia

Degrees

PhD in Culture and Society
PG Diploma Research Methods for Social Science
MA International Development Management
BA Hons Social Policy and Administration

Honors and Awards

2012: International Postgraduate Research Scholarship – Western Sydney University
2006: Best Master Degree Dissertation – University of Bradford Centre for International Development

Research Interests

Isaac’s research cuts across economic geography, human geography, anthropology, development studies, Khmer studies, critical management studies, social entrepreneurship, and social enterprise. His PhD explored the theory and practice of social enterprise as a building block for community development in two villages in eastern Cambodia, based on fieldwork that combined ethnography with a performative action research project harnessing Asset Based Community Development, in partnership with a research group constituted by village residents and staff at a local NGO called “Buddhism for Social Development Action”, which he continues to support as a Board Member. He was previosuly the coordinator of a British Council funded social enterprise project in Cambodia, a convener of the National Social Enterprise Conference of Cambodia from 2010-14, and he has been a visiting researcher and lecturer at the Royal University of Phnom Penh for more than a decade.

Since finishing his PhD, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by the SeedBox International Environmental Humanities Collaboratory, Isaac engaged with water distribution in eastern Cambodia via a ‘business at the bottom of the pyramid approach’, through environmental humanities and his interests in community economies research. Through this work he also continued to pursue his interest in the impacts of Buddhist and spiritual beliefs and practices on entrepreneurial subjectivities, which has been an undercurrent in his PhD and several publications. Isaac is now focusing on the distribution of social goods in the form of digitized financial services and its impact on wellbeing in farming households and on women farmers particularly in Cambodia and Laos. This is a five-year project based at Western Sydney University Institute for Culture and Society, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

Contact Information

i.lyne@westernsydney.edu.au