Description
Questions of whose knowledge counts have become increasingly prominent across peacebuilding scholarship and practice. Yet less attention has been paid to how differently positioned actors within the same research space understand what knowledge is and what forms of knowledge matter. This paper examines an epistemological tension that emerged within a collaborative academic-community inquiry involving Cambodian and Thai youth researching online conflict between their countries through Facilitative Listening Design (FLD). Drawing on focus groups, interviews, autoethnography, and two years of collaborative engagement, the paper explores a persistent disconnect between my own positioning as a PhD researcher embedded within Global North academic institutions and participants’ understandings of the project taking place in the Global South. While I sought evidence of knowledge contributions to scholarship and policy, participants repeatedly emphasised knowledge as their own learning, relationships, and practical action. The tension culminated in a follow-up focus group held after armed conflict erupted between Cambodia and Thailand. Reflecting on the project's contribution, participant-researchers argued that the most important knowledge produced was not the empirical findings but the friendship they had built across conflict lines. In a context where dominant narratives increasingly constructed Thais and Cambodians as enemies, friendship itself became an embodied and relational form of knowledge that countered the status quo in both contexts. The paper argues that participatory inquiry may generate competing epistemologies, raising important questions about whose knowledge counts and how knowledge is valued across Global North–Global South research partnerships.