2.4. Ian Lubek: Mentor

The Operative Word

In this fourth episode of Volume Two, Ally Gibson and Siobhán Healy-Cullen sit down with Ian Lubek. Ian reflects on his research journey, and looks back on receiving the ISCHP Lifetime Impact with Communities Award (2023). Ian is an adjunct professor at the University of Guelph, Canada. For over 25 years Ian and the NGO he formed, SirCHESI, have used community-based participatory action research to with women in Siem Reap (near Angkor Wat Cambodia) involved as beer sellers and hostesses at entertainment venues. The aims of this community-driven work were to: 1) counter customers’ pressures to engage in unprotected sex, 2) gain training to move on to safer hotel work, and 3) become peer educators to help others keep safe (by using condoms). In 2000, when they started this action research, the prevalence of HIV was 25%; this was reduced to 1% by 2012. Ian helped build and fund the local NGO and assisted in forming a union that empowered locals and doubled salaries. You can read more about Ian's work here:

https://news.uoguelph.ca/2013/01/research-helps-reduce-hivaids-in-siem-reap/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1359105313500253