Background An Aboriginal-developed empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing program, known as Family Wellbeing (FWB), has been found to strengthen the protective factors that help Indigenous Australians to deal with the legacy of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. This article reviews the research that has accompanied the implementation of the program, over a 23 year period. The aim is to assess the long-term impact of FWB research and identify the key enablers of research impact and the limitations of the impact assessment exercise. This will inform more comprehensive monitoring of research impact into the future. Methods To assess impact, the study took an implementation science approach, incorporating theory of change and service utilisation frameworks, to create a logic model underpinned by Indigenous research principles. A research impact narrative was developed based on mixed methods analysis of publicly available data on: 1) FWB program participation; 2) research program funding; 3) program outcome evaluation (nine studies); and 4) accounts of research utilisation (seven studies). Results  Starting from a need for research on empowerment identified by research users, an investment of $2.3 million in research activities over 23 years produced a range of research outputs that evidenced social and emotional wellbeing benefits arising from participation in the FWB program. Accounts of research utilisation confirmed the role of research outputs in educating participants about the program, and thus, facilitating more demand (and funding acquisition) for FWB. Overall research contributed to 5,405 recorded participants accessing the intervention. The key enablers of research impact were; 1) the research was user- and community-driven; 2) a long-term mutually beneficial partnership between research users and researchers; 3) the creation of a body of knowledge that demonstrated the impact of the FWB intervention via different research methods; 4) the universality of the FWB approach which led to widespread application. Conclusions The FWB research impact exercise reinforced the view that assessing research impact is best approached as a “wicked problem” for which there are no easy fixes. It requires flexible, open-ended, collaborative learning-by-doing approaches to build the evidence base over time. Steps and approaches that research groups might take to build the research impact knowledge base within their disciplines are discussed.

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In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14 billion being spent on facilitating trade, development and infrastructural ties between these nations, poverty remains widespread. This article provides a critical analysis of the Asian Development Bank and its approach to development and poverty alleviation within the Greater Mekong Subregion. It suggests that the institution's technocratic neoliberal development ideology provides a discursive legitimation to processes of displacement and dispossession that has seen the production of new forms of poverty. To make this argument, the article draws on an ethnographic study of the local-scale implications of forced resettlement at the Luang Prabang Airport. It conducts an analysis of how the Asian Development Bank defines and measures poverty, and critiques the institution's resettlement guidelines for the airport project.

Following the extraordinary wealth generation of casinos in Macau and Singapore, governments and non-state actors across Southeast Asia have developed gambling establishments as a means of fast-tracking economic growth and stimulating national development. Yet, here and elsewhere, casinos have been heavily criticized for their association with immoral behaviour, problem gambling, corruption, and organized crime. In this article, I focus on two casinos in northern Laos to address two research questions. First, I consider how casinos have come to exist within the remote border regions of one of Asia's least developed countries. I discuss vice economies within the Golden Triangle region, multi-actor aspirations to boost transnational connectivity within continental Southeast Asia, strengthening political-economic relationships between Laos and China, and Government of Laos efforts to use foreign investment as a mechanism for increasing governance capacities in borderlands. Following this, I critically analyze the relationship between casinos and development in Laos. I focus specifically on the multifarious effects of casinos on the lives and livelihoods of local communities to argue that casino development has been informed by logics of expulsion and the establishment of new predatory formations. To make this argument, the article draws on four fieldwork visits to each of the casino sites between 2011 and 2015, deskbased research, and interviews with local residents, casino staff, and members of the Government of Laos.

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