Reimagining Research Ethics Through Local Knowledge and Leadership: The Community Ethics Advisory Board on the Thailand–Burma Border

ABSTRACT This article examines the Community Ethics Advisory Board (CEAB) on the Thailand–Burma border as a locally led ethics advisory mechanism that complements formal and institutionalised ethics systems within and beyond the region. CEAB was created to enable community members to provide guidance on research proposals and activities in their areas, and in response to longstanding concerns about extractive and externally driven research practices that often marginalised local knowledge and leadership. Drawing on internal documentation and reflections of its members, the article analyses CEAB's successes and challenges in ensuring ethical research within a context shaped by conflict, authoritarianism and structural violence. It demonstrates that CEAB grounds research ethics in local knowledge and realities; reframes ‘do no harm’ in ways that consider structural drivers of harm and that emphasise community benefits; and enhances community rights and leadership in research ethics and practices. Yet CEAB members face significant challenges in translating their vision into practice, including lack of resources, lack of enforcement capacity and lack of recognition. These challenges, alongside CEAB's achievements, reveal ongoing struggles over whose knowledge and leadership ‘count’ in research processes. Greater recognition of community knowledge and leadership is in turn essential for more ethical and equitable research.