Assistant Professor CHANRAKSMEY THOLTHOEUN is Head of the Department of Educational Research and Library (DERL). Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Education at the University of Auckland (UoA), New Zealand, under the Manaaki New Zealand Scholarship (MNZS).

Prior to commencing her doctoral studies, she earned a Bachelor's degree in Education from the Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL) at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) in 2012, followed by a Specialist Certificate in Translation and Interpreting from IFL in 2013. She obtained her Master's degree in Education from Northeast Normal University (NENU), China, in 2016 under the Chinese Government Scholarship (CSC) programme. In 2018, she earned a Specialist Certificate in Teaching English as an International Language from the Regional Language Centre (RELC), Singapore. In 2019, she received the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship award to participate in the Teaching Excellence and Achievement Programme at the University of Arkansas, USA. In 2022, she completed the Knowledge Co-Creation Programme on the Project for Establishing Foundations for Teacher Education Colleges (E-TEC) at Nara University of Education in Japan. Last but not least, in 2023, she completed a professional programme on Leading Schools in the Post-Pandemic Era at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Professionally, she has been working at Phnom Penh Teacher Education College (PTEC) since 2018. As Head of Department, her work involves strategic planning for the development of the department, promoting and supporting educational research, managing library resources and services, and providing access to academic materials that enhance teaching, learning, and professional development for student teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. Moreover, she has been involved in a number of research projects, taught Educational Research (ER) to third-year student teachers, and supervised the research of fourth-year student teachers within a joint Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) research project between PTEC, Cambodia, and Karel de Grote University (KdG), Belgium. In addition, she has also served on the editorial boards of the Cambodian Education Forum and the Cambodian Journal of Educational Research.

Her professional and research interests centre on teacher education, educational reform, and teacher development, with a particular focus on teacher professional learning, teaching practices, teacher professional development, and teacher-related policy analysis.