Studies on lecturer research in English Language Teaching (ELT) are still scant and little is known about how contextual factors influence research engagement of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers. This study addresses this gap by providing insights into how Vietnamese EFL lecturers at tertiary level experienced the contextual influences on their research engagement. Through a phenomenological research design, the findings from this study demonstrate that Vietnamese tertiary EFL lecturers’ research engagement is driven by regulated policies in response to the national education reforms and mainly top-down, but the actual involvement is grounded in lecturers’ individual responsibility and motivation. This study found that the national, institutional and individual factors had both positive and negative influences on EFL lecturers’ experiences of research engagement. Drawing on the ecological systems theory, the study proposed a model of motivators and de-motivators of lecturers’ research engagement. Keywords: research engagement, contextual factors, ecological systems theory, English as a foreign language (EFL)