EWV First Conference – Engaging With Vietnam

Melbourne

2010

THE 1st “ENGAGING WITH VIETNAM: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE” CONFERENCE

23-24 February 2010
Monash University Conference Centre, 30 Collins Street, Melbourne

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) Office; The Cultural Sociology of Education and the Language, Literacy and Education Research Groups, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia

CO-CHAIRS AND CO-CONVENERS

Dr. Phan Lê Hà (Monash University) Deputy Vice-Chancellor Stephanie Fahey (Monash University) and Professor Philip Hirsch (University of Sydney)

CONFERENCE SECRETARY

Lê Thùy Linh

THEME

This conference featured Vietnam-related research work by Vietnamese and international researchers and research students in Australian universities and organisations. It covered a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from education to geography, social sciences to art, and from health to business and economics. The conference explored how knowledge about Vietnam has been constructed and reconstructed in the context of globalisation, mobility and transnationality, and how processes of knowledge mobilisation take place at the local, regional, global and glonocal levels. At the conference we listened to the participants’ perspectives regarding the issues of “brain drain” and “brain exchange” and making contributions to Vietnam through research work. Suggestions from researcher-presenters and participants on how to build and sustain effective collaborations between researchers working on Vietnam-related issues were also discussed.

Download the Program for EWV #1

Presenters

Stephanie Fahey

As Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) of Monash University, Professor Stephanie Fahey is responsible for setting the university’s strategic direction for global engagement in research and education.

Professor Fahey’s career has included positions at several Australian universities, most recently as Director of the Research Institute for Asia Pacific and Acting Assistant Pro Vice-Chancellor (International – Asia Pacific) at the University of Sydney.
Professor Fahey holds a Bachelor of Arts with honours from the University of Sydney and a PhD from the Australian National University. Her research interests have covered socio-economic development in the Pacific, primarily Papua New Guinea, transition of Vietnamese society and economy and more recently the use of the internet in the expression and development of international relations among youth in North East Asia.

Active in community engagement, Professor Fahey has been appointed to many influential government boards, non-governmental organisation boards and business councils including the Foreign Affairs Council, the national board of the Australia China Business Council, the Australia Korea Foundation, and a subcommittee of the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Committee which looks at Australia’s engagement with China and India.

Phan Lê Hà

Dr. Phan Lê Hà (Phan is the family name), is a Full Professor in the College of Education, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA. Professor Phan also holds adjunct positions at universities in Vietnam and Australia. Her expertise includes language-identity-pedagogy studies, knowledge mobility and production, TESOL, and international and higher education. She is the founder of Engaging with Vietnam, which since 2009 has brought together policy makers, researchers, and professionals working in a wide range of countries and organizations to engage with Vietnam-related scholarship from inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives and approaches. She looks forward to your helping the Initiative to blossom and sustain itself as a continuing rigorous dialogue.

Phan Le Ha’s expertise, knowledge and experiences are largely informed by her work in Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and North America. She has been supervising/advising research projects at Honours, Master’s and PhD levels on a wide range of topics, including identity studies, English language education in global contexts, transnational/offshore education, and the internationalisation of education more broadly.

Her publications can be found on:

https://coe.hawaii.edu/directory/?person=halephan

http://monuni.academia.edu/LeHaPhan

Professor Phan is currently developing a new interest in engaging with the arts, the media and the digital world to produce multimodal multidisciplinary scholarship and to push research and knowledge production into new directions.

Philip Hirsch

Dr. Philip Hirsch is a Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney and a research affiliate at Chiang Mai University. He specializes in natural resource management, rural change and the politics of environment in Southeast Asia. Phil has carried out engaged and collaborative research and written extensively on a range of natural resource governance, livelihood and development themes in the Mekong region. He has been working on and in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia since the early 1980s. Phil is fluent in Thai and Lao, and also speaks and reads passable Vietnamese and some Khmer.

Michael Singh

Dr. Michael Singh is a Professor in the Centre for Educational Research (SoE) at Western Sydney University. His research focuses on post-monolingual education in languages and across the curriculum. Key areas of study include the business of English-only medium instruction and research, internationalising doctoral pedagogy, modes of critical thinking in Zhōng Wén, Tiếng Việt and English, post-English-only approaches to publishing research, research-oriented work-integrated service-learning, and researchers’ uses of their full linguistic repertoire for theorising. His recently co-authored books include Localising Chinese: Educating Teachers through Service-Learning (Palgrave Macmillan), Pedagogies for Internationalising Research Education (Springer), and Deschooling Learning: Young Adults and the New Spirit of Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan).

Madame Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh

Madame Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh is President of the Founding Committee of Tri Viet University in Viet Nam. This university, to be opened in early 2013, ambitions to be innovative in the context of a Viet Nam in transition: albeit a private enterprise, Tri Viet will dedicate itself to public service, and, while rooted in Vietnamese reality, will be boldly open to the world. In her present project, Madame Ninh’s leadership draws upon her first calling as a scholar and academic, when she taught at the Sorbonne after obtaining an Agregation from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Fontenay- Aux-Roses (France) and Cambridge University (the United Kingdom).

Madame Ninh served Viet Nam’s international integration as a diplomat for more than two decades specializing in multilateral institutions and global issues. From 2000 to 2003, she was Viet Nam’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and Head of Mission to the European Union in Brussels. At the 11th National Assembly of Viet Nam (2002-2007), Madame Ninh served as Vice-Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, focusing on North America and Western Europe.

On the social front, Madame Ninh has been consistently active, with a special interest on gender and post-war legacy issues, such as the impact of Agent Orange/dioxin in Viet Nam. In August 2007 she established the Global Vietnamese Women’s Network – her own women’s NGO – aimed at linking up Vietnamese women within and outside the country contributing in different fields to Viet Nam’s international integration.

Simon Marginson

Dr. Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education in the Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia since 2000, holder of Australian Research Council project funding continuously since 1995 and a frequent contributor to public discussion of higher education in Australia, his work is focused on globalization and higher education, international education, national policy and systems in education and innovation, and problems of the “knowledge economy” and creative work. He is a member of ten international journal boards including Higher Education, Higher Education Policy, Journal of Higher Education, Educational Researcher and Thesis Eleven. The author of the highly cited Markets in Education (1997) and The Enterprise University (with Mark Considine, 2000), his next two books will be Global Creation: Space, Mobility and Synchrony in the Age of the Knowledge Economy (with Peter Murphy and Michael Peters, published by Peter Lang in New York in February 2010) and International Student Security (with Chris Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir and Helen Forbes-Mewett, published by Cambridge University Press in May 2010). He has completed several papers for OECD and provided advice on policy to governments in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong Kong China, Ireland and the Netherlands. In Vietnam he has provided recent advice on the development of university rankings, and conducted a case study of the global position, perspectives and strategies of Vietnam National University in Hanoi as part of a program of research on the global position and strategies of research universities in the Asia-Pacific region.

Pham Quang Minh

Dr. Pham Quang Minh is associate professor of history and politics at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH), Vietnam National University-Hanoi. After receiving his PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany) in 2002, he first became deputy head, and then head of the International Studies Department at USSH, and in 2012 Pham Quang Minh was promoted to Vice-Rector for research affairs at the university. His main teaching and researching interests include world politics, Asia-Pacific international relations, and Vietnam’s foreign policy. His articles have appeared in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Asia-Pacific Review, and Asia Europe Journal; he has also recently contributed a chapter “East Asia and the Pacific: The Regional Roles of Vietnam and Korea,” to Joon-Woo Park, Gi-Wook Shin, and Donald W. Keyser (eds.), Asia’s Middle Powers? The Identity and Regional Policy of South Korea and Vietnam, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University 2013, pp. 73-97.

Adam Fforde

Dr. Adam Fforde is one of the most widely cited authors working on contemporary Vietnam. He holds an honorary position at the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne and is part-time Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University. He is also Chairman, Adam Fforde and Associates p/l. He studied Engineering and Economics at Oxford and then worked as an economic consultant in London before taking Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Economics at Birkbeck College London and Cambridge respectively. His PhD (1982) was about agricultural cooperatives in north Vietnam and he was a student at Hanoi University in 1978-79. From 1983-87 he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and since then he has combined academic and consulting work related to Vietnam and to development issues more generally. He worked for the Swedish-Vietnamese cooperation in 1987-92, and was a Senior Fellow at the SEA Studies Program, NUS, in 2000-2001. In Melbourne he has taught sessionally at Monash, Latrobe and the University of Melbourne. His most recent book on Vietnam is Vietnamese State Industry and the Political Economy of Commercial Renaissance: Dragon’s Tooth or Curate’s Egg? (Oxford: Chandos 2007). A book on development, Coping with Facts – A Skeptic’s Guide to the Problem of Development, will be published later this year by Kumarian Press. His current consultancies include studies of the Vietnamese civil service, educational socialization in Ho Chi Minh City and relationships between the environment, foreign trade and human development in various rural sectors in Cambodia.

Lê Thùy Linh

Dr. Lê Thùy Linh (PhD, Education, Monash University, Australia) has been a lecturer at Hanoi National University of Education (HNUE), Vietnam since 1999. She is currently the head of the English department at Baxter Institute and teaching TESOL at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She has been actively involved in English language training and teacher education through her work with various professional development projects in Vietnam and Australia over the last 18 years. Her research interests include Teacher Education and Teacher Identity, Pedagogy and Assessment in TESOL, Professionalism in ELT, and recently Vocational Training and Education (VET).

Thao Le

Dr. Thao Le completed the Bachelors Degree in English linguistics at Saigon University in 1969. With a special interest in ethnography and an enthusiasm of a young graduate, he moved on to undertake a research Masters in Jarai, a highland minority language in Central Highlands of Vietnam. However his dream of living with culturally isolated mountain people as a part of his research fieldwork was dashed due to the fierce war taking place throughout Vietnam at that time. In 1971 Dr. Thao Le was awarded a research scholarship by Monash University, Australia, to undertake PhD in linguistics. His PhD thesis was on theoretical linguistics. Dr. Thao Lê was offered a lectureship at the University of Tasmania in 1974 and has been teaching in the Faculty of Education till now. He has held various positions and played important roles in the development of the Faculty such as: Senior Lecturer, Assistant Dean, Director of the Masters Program, Graduate Research Coordinator and Associate Dean (Research). Currently he is lecturing in postgraduate courses and supervising eighteen research students. He was awarded: – Faculty of Education Mentor Award , – University of Tasmania’s Teaching Excellence Award, – University of Tasmania’s Award for Excellent Contribution to Graduate Supervision and Research. His research interests cover a wide range of academic areas: linguistics, educational multimedia, intercultural studies, and research methodology.

Tran Van Hoa

B.EC (Hons), M.EC, PhD

Professor Tran Van Hoa holds higher degrees from the University of Western Australia and Monash University, Victoria, Australia. He has taught widely at universities in Australia, Asia (e.g., Thammasat, Thailand, and National Economics University, Vietnam) and the US (e.g., Stanford), and visited major international research institutes and universities in the US (eg. Columbia, University of California) and Europe (e.g., LSE and Cambridge (UK), UCL (Belgium), INSEE and CEPII (France), Kiel Institute of World Economics (Germany), Institute of Advanced Studies (Austria), Rotterdam Econometric Institute). He has trained government officials and business executives in market economics, trade, development and competition policy and business economics in major Asian countries. Professor Tran Van Hoa was Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, and has published 26 books, over 110 refereed articles in the major applied and theoretical areas of social and welfare economics, economics, business, finance, energy and econometrics in Australian and international professional journals, and over 140 government commissioned reports and conference papers.

Dr Tran Van Hoa is listed in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in Asia and Pacific Nations, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Australia, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, 2000 Outstanding People of the 20th Century, 1000 Great Intellectuals of the 21st Century, Dictionary of International Biography, and in Living Legends. He also is a Director of T&M Enterprises P/L (Australia) which provides education and consulting services. In the past few years, he has been a consultant to a number of international (e.g., UNESCAP) and national (e.g., AusAID, ACIL-Cardno, ICC) organisations, and various ministries in Thailand (e.g., commerce) and Vietnam (e.g., trade, and natural resources and environment).

Keith Simkin

Dr. Keith Simkin teaches in the Faculty of Education, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Melbourne, in the areas of intercultural communication and education for diversity. He has taught in the Master of Applied Linguistics Program of Vietnam National University and La Trobe University from 1995 to 2007. He is currently supervising Masters and Doctoral students from various universities in Vietnam.

James Giesecke

Dr. Giesecke is a Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor level) and Director, External Relations, at the Centre of Policy Studies (Monash University. Prior to joining Monash in 2002 he has worked in several research position with the Centre for Regional Economic Analysis (CREA) at the University of Tasmania, the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies (University of Adelaide) and KPMG Peat Marwick Management Consultants.

Dr. Giesecke main areas of expertise are in the development and application of large-scale multi-regional and national computable general equilibrium models, with over a decade’s experience in applying such models to historical, forecasting and policy analysis. He has built economic models and conduct policy analyses for Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

During 2007-2009 Dr. Giesecke was the lead researcher on three projects to build economic models and to conduct policy analyses for Vietnam. These include a UNDP-funded project to build a dynamic general equilibrium model for the Ministry of Finance, Vietnam, an AusAID-funded to build a model with extended labour market and income distribution for the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs, and a World Bank project to analyse the impacts of adaptation policies in Vietnam.

Iftekhar Ahmed

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed has worked in several countries including Bangladesh, Australia, Germany, India, UK and USA. He has worked extensively as consultant on human settlements and disaster risk management related projects for several international agencies including UNESCAP, UNDP, UN-Habitat, DFID, Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), European Commission Humanitarian Assistance Office (ECHO), Architects Without Frontiers (AWF) and the Bill Gates Foundation (through Urbis). His work had been nominated for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2004.

Dr. Ahmed taught at the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) during 1992-2004; designed the curriculum and worked as coordinator of the Postgraduate Programs in Disaster Management at BRAC University, Bangladesh, which began in 2005, and has served as External Advisor since then. He worked at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), Thailand during 2006-07 and was responsible for managing the PROMISE (Program for Hydro-Meteorological Disaster Mitigation in Secondary Cities in Asia) projects in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. He also assisted in ADPC’s regional and national training courses, particularly the Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) course.

During 2009 Dr. Ahmed worked as Research Fellow at Monash University, Australia on assessment of post-disaster resettlement programmes. He is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia and involved in research on post-tsunami reconstruction in Aceh, Indonesia. He teaches courses on architectural design, urbanization and disaster risk management. Since 2008 he has been working at RMIT University, and presently employed full-time to conduct research on climate change adaptation in urban built environments in the Asia-Pacific region and particularly in Vietnam.

Dr. Ahmed completed his doctorate in 1999 from Oxford Brookes University, UK and Master of Science in 1991 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. He graduated in 1987 in Architecture from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India. He is a member of the Institute of Architects, Bangladesh as well as several other professional bodies. Iftekhar has written several books, professional reports and has many peer-reviewed publications to his credit.

Dung Tong

Ms. Dung Tong is currently a PhD student in the University of York, UK. She had completed her MA in English in 2004 in the National University of Vietnam in Hanoi. Dung was working as an English teacher in various universities in Hanoi between 2000 and 2006. She has also been involved in a number of corporate trainings and preparation courses for Vietnamese students for IELTS (International English Language Testing Service) both in Vietnam and the UK. Her main research interest is the relationship between identity, culture and language.

Paul McShane

Dr. Paul McShane is Chief Research Officer of the Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University. With post graduate qualifications in science and business Paul has held senior research management positions in Australia and in New Zealand. Further to this, he has worked extensively in South East Asia providing advice to governments on sustainable development of marine resources. He is currently responsible for developing and managing major multidisciplinary projects addressing sustainability issues (climate change, energy, water) nationally and internationally on behalf of Monash University. In previous roles, Paul was managing director of Global Marine Resource Management Pty Ltd, Director of the Australian Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, Director of Australian Marine Science and Technology Ltd (AMSAT), Vice President (international and development) and Professor of Marine Science at the Australian Maritime College, research manager SARDI Aquatic Sciences, and program leader at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (New Zealand). He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Philip Martin

Mr. Philip Martin is a Lecturer at the School of Media and Communications, RMIT University, and is completing in 2010 a PhD in Gender Studies, University of Melbourne (Research Thesis: “Renovating Masculinities: Urban Men’s Experiences and Emergent Masculinity Models in Post Doi Moi Vietnam”). His PhD project explores young urban heterosexual Vietnamese men’s experiences, memories and expectations in relation to issues of gender identity, masculinity, sexuality and self in the context of 1986 state policies of renovation (Doi Moi), and other social transformations.

Philip has previously been a Lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Ho Chi Minh City), and variously has supervised, advised on, and participated in a number of health, education, communications and gender research projects in Vietnam.

Ngan Collins

Dr. Ngan Collins (MA, Victoria University, PhD, The University of Melbourne) is a lecturer in the School of Management at RMIT University. Her research interests include globalization, transitional theories, comparative Human Resource Management and employment relations in East Asian economies, and transformation of HRM and HRD in Vietnam during its economic reform.

Ngan Collins is an author of Economic Reform and Employment Relations in Vietnam (Routledge, 2009). The transformation of the Vietnamese economy from one characterised by a socialist planning to a market economy has led to Vietnam having one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world and engaging much more with the international economy, joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2006. This book fills a significant gap by surveying the economic reforms in Vietnam, whereas most studies have concentrated on other “young tiger” economies. In particular, it discusses the transformation of employment relations which have been a key part of the reforms and a necessary pre-condition to WTO membership. It examines the nature of employment reforms, analyses the motivation behind new policy initiatives and examines the detail of reforms in a range of business enterprises, reporting on extensive original research. Throughout it shows how several key forces have interacted – globalization, government political interests, national cultural norms, market, managerial ideology and the special characteristics of particular firms – to produce a particular Vietnamese brand of post-communist market economy. Overall, this book illuminates how employment relation practices are formed in transitional economies and, more broadly, the economic and political transformation of socialist economies in the context of the global market.

Nguyen Quang Trung

Mr. Nguyen Quang Trung is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University. His research topic is public management and e-government. Trung received his Bachelor in Business Administration, specializing in International Trade, from Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics in 2000. He was awarded a Master degree in Development Economics from the HEU-ISS Program in 2002. Before commencing his doctoral study at Monash in 2008, Trung had been working at The Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Trung has co-written books on qualitative analysis in management and written articles on E-government and education. He has also presented at conferences in both Vietnam and Australia.

Dang Thi Kim Anh

Ms. Dang Thi Kim Anh is a lecturer at Vietnam National University (VNU), Hanoi, and is currently a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, where she has also completed her M.Ed. She has been actively involved in teacher education and trainer training for the past decade through her work at the VNU and consultancy for various Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and development projects in Vietnam. Her research interests include language education, teacher education, student learning and educational leadership.

Annette Van den Bosch

Dr. Annette Van den Bosch is an art historian with a PhD from the University of Sydney: The Art Market Since 1940. She held research and lecturing positions at Monash University, Melbourne, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, and Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. In 2003 she was a Visiting Lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City Faculty of Fine Arts (HCUMFA), and she undertook research in Vietnam in 2005 and 2006. Dr. Van den Bosch was a research fellow at the Centre for Leisure Management Research, in the Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Melbourne 2006-2008. She is currently Adjunct Research Fellow, Monash Asia Institute, Monash University.

Dr. Van den Bosch was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Arts and Culture, Columbia University, New York in 1995-1996. Her research was focused on the impact of the market for art on artists, their careers and the art they produce. Research in New York, London and Paris as well as Australia was published in her second book, The Australian Artworld: Aesthetics in a Global Market (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, January 2005). Another research focus is on the impact of the market on museums. Recent publications in this field are “Cultural Memory Re-presented at the Quai Branly Museum” in Museum Marketing: Competing in the Global Market (Sydney: Elsevier, Butterworth-Heinemann 2006); and “Museums: Constructing a Public Culture in the Global Age” Third Text 19, 1 January 2005.

Vietnam was the other main focus of Dr. Van den Bosch’s research over the last five years. Published articles in this field include: “Professional Artists in Vietnam: Intellectual Property Rights, Economic and Cultural Sustainability” in Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society Vol. 39, No. 3, Fall, 2009. Publications in Vietnamese art history include: “Signs of Grief, Memory of Violence and the Suppression of Freedom of Expression in the Work of Three Vietnamese Artists,” Presented at the 17th Asian Studies Association of Australia Conference, “Is This the Asian Century?” Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne 2008 www.monash.edu.au/mai/asianstudiesconference and “New Directions in Contemporary Vietnamese Art,” Post Doi Moi Conference, Singapore Art Museum, May 2008.

Dr. Van den Bosch has curated a number of exhibitions the most relevant to this conference are: New Figuration in Vietnamese Painting and Sculpture Faculty Gallery, Monash University, February 2005. She curated the exhibition with Tran Thi Huynh Nga, Blu Space Art Centre, Ho Chi Minh City and wrote the catalogue essay. Another exhibition, Le Van Tai, Moonfall and Flowers, was curated for Walker Street Gallery, City of Greater Dandenong, May 2005.

Thanh Hai Nguyen

Degree completed in 2008: Doctor of Business Administration (Monash)

Current: PhD candidate (Arts) at Monash Asia Institute, Monash University

Dr. Thanh Hai Nguyen has completed a Degree of Doctor of Business Administration at Monash University in 2008 and currently undertaking a second doctoral project in Arts at Monash Asia Institute.

He has served as a reviewer for several academic journals including the Monash Business Review, the International Journal of Enterprises and Network Management, and the Journal of Sustainable Development. He also served as a reviewer for the Academy of Management (AOM), the Academy of International Business (AIB) in 2008-2009 and for several international conferences.

Thanh Hai has published 23 full refereed research papers in Australia, USA, Canada, Europe, including 1 book chapter, 10 articles, and several conference papers. Publications topics are: SMEs & governance, business research method (ethics), knowledge management in SMEs, e-government.

Martyn Brogan

Mr. Martyn Brogan has taught English as a second, foreign or additional language in a range of settings to a range of learners in a number of locations for over 20 years. He has taught graduate certificate, graduate diploma and MA / MTESOL candidates since 1995 in Australia and Vietnam. He lived in Vietnam in 1998 and 1999, and has had positions teaching and coordinating certificate and non-certificate EFL teacher training programs in Vietnam since 1991.

Julian Silverman

Dr. Julian Silverman is the coordinator of Koorie Community Services Programs at RMIT’s School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning. He creates vocational training programs in a range of local and international community development contexts. His research interests include the link between culture and community development and he is currently assisting in the formation of social work training in partnership with UNICEF and the Government of Vietnam.

Boitran Huynh-Beattie

Dr. Boitran Huynh-Beattie completed her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2005 on the topic “Vietnamese Aesthetics from 1925 Onwards,” providing a largely overlooked and comprehensive account of Vietnamese art history of the former Republic of Vietnam. She has worked with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre on several exhibitions and undertaken research with academics from the Australian National University, Melbourne University and the University of Wollongong on projects related to Vietnam’s Diaspora.

Dr. Huynh-Beattie was one of the two advisers for Post Đổi Mới – Vietnamese Art after 1990 and a speaker at the associated conference at Singapore Art Museum in 2008. She was the Project Curator for the Nam Bang! Exhibition at Casula Powerhouse, from April to June, 2009. As a visiting lecturer she gave lectures on the most important artist of the Vietnamese diaspora, Le Thanh Nhon, and on Vietnamese contemporary art subjects at Monash University, Melbourne, and the University of Sydney.

Mark Vicars

Dr. Mark Vicars is a Senior Lecturer in Literacy at Victoria University. Melbourne. Mark co-ordinates the Doctor of Education (EdD) at Victoria University and teaches on the MA/ MTESOL program in Vietnam. He is also a counsellor and interested in arts practice as a way of learning and knowing in the world. In 2009 he was awarded a research grant to examine English language learning and teaching in Thailand. Mark is interested in intercultural literacy and informal literacy practices as a means of practicing identity and of making sense of the world.

Tran Duc Nga

Ms. Tran Duc Nga worked at Haiphong Private University as Deputy Director of International Office. In 2008 she was awarded with Australian Leadership Award Scholarship. She is a currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania. Her research interest includes academics’ conceptions of teaching; evaluation and rewarding of teaching; and quality assurance in tertiary education.

La Manh Cuong

Mr. La Manh Cuong is a PhD Candidate at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University. Earlier, Cuong was a lecturer of medical anthropology at the Hanoi School of Public Health. He is one of the pioneering scholars nationwide who successfully earned a master degree in human sexuality studies in San Francisco in 2005. His thesis looked at the social meanings of female virginity and how they relate to masculinity amongst young educated men in Hanoi. He has long been interested in sexuality research, particularly in relation to male sexualities and masculinities in Vietnam. From 2005 to 2007, Cuong was activelly involved in HIV/AIDS policy and advocacy, promotion of greater involvement of people living with HIV, men sexual health particular on the raise of gay men in Vietnam. Currently, he is doing field work for his PhD dissertation looking at sexual expression amongst young, adult, middle-class, married men in contemporary Vietnam.

Catherine Earl

Dr. Catherine Earl is a social anthropologist. Her research interests centre on urban migrants, women’s education, gender identities and youth culture in late twentieth and twenty-first century Vietnam and Australia. Her doctoral project drew on ethnographic fieldwork to explore cultural capital, migration and social mobility among Ho Chi Minh City’s re-emerging middle classes. Publications include A Home of Many Rooms (2008), a history of the Melbourne-based Australian Vietnamese Women’s Association; Student Voices in Transition (with Stuart Levy, forthcoming 2010), an investigation of challenges faced by non-traditional and “first-in-family” students commencing university study in Australia and South Africa; and a commissioned oral history of community health in Gippsland (forthcoming 2010). Catherine is a lecturer in the School of Humanities, Communications and Social Sciences at Monash University Gippsland.

Tran Hoang Nhi

Dr. Tran Hoang Nhi is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies, Monash University. She recently developed a MONASH-style model of the Vietnamese economy and used it to analyse structural changes in the Vietnamese economy over the period 1996-2003. Since 2007 she has been working on several projects to build economic models and to conduct policy analyses for Vietnam. These include a UNDP-funded project to build a dynamic general equilibrium model for the Ministry of Finance, Vietnam, an AusAID-funded to build a model with extended labour market and income distribution for the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs, and a World Bank project to analyse the impacts of adaptation policies in Vietnam.

Dr. Tran has taught International Trade and Economics at the Ho Chi Minh City Open University and Fulbright Economic Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City. Prior to that she worked in a number of state-owned enterprises in various technical and business positions.

Hoa Levitas

Dr. Hoa Levitas (Ph.D.Edumanagement.Monash),

Regional Manager, International, Monash University.

Nguyen Tien Thanh

Mr. Nguyen Tien Thanh is working as Deputy Director of Quality Assurance Office at Haiphong Private University (HPU), Vietnam. He has been involved extensively in the accreditation processes at HPU. He is now pursuing his doctorate degree at Latrobe University on topic of academics’ understanding of intended learning outcomes.

Matthew Piscioneri

Dr. Matthew Piscioneri lectures in the Arts Academic Language and Learning Unit at Monash University, Australia. He obtained his doctorate in Philosophy in 2004 from the University of Queensland, Australia where his dissertation developed a critical reading of Jurgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action. His research examines the internationalization of universities, ethical issues in student care, the delivery of teaching and learning resources at university and tertiary reading requirements. In a more philosophical vein, he is also interested in the critique of the ethical bases for globalizing democracy. Recently he has been part of a major ALTC funded project evaluating student preferences for modes of teaching and learning resource delivery: [www.teachanddelivery.net]. He is business editor for the forthcoming collection Effectively Implementing ICTs in HE in the Asia-Pacific Region (NOVA SCIENCE Publishing) and currently principal investigator in a project examining the application of E-Portfolios to higher degrees research students in Arts subjects. In 2008/09, Matthew coordinated international symposia in Vietnam, Korea, China, UAE and Malaysia. He presented papers at these Symposia related to his current research into learning and teaching enhancement, with a focus on the needs of NESB/international students. An essay “Walking the tightrope,” which examines current debates over the status of English as an international (academic) language is included in the forthcoming volume Crossing Cultures published by Pearson Longman Malaysia.

Nguyen Tuong Huy

Nguyen Tuong Huy has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Geography, Hanoi National University of Education in Vietnam since 1996. His research interests cover the fields of rural development and management. Huy has a Masters in political and economic geography from Hanoi National University of Education (1999) and a Masters in rural development management from Khon Kean University, Thailand (2002).

Huy commenced his PhD research at the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, in 2007. His research explores poverty dynamics in relation to livelihood diversification and transitions in coastal fisheries communities in Vietnam. The study seeks to better understand what poverty is and who the poor are; how coastal livelihoods have changed and how this process has affected rural people’s well-being by identifying their opportunities and constraints to having access to and control over new modes of livelihoods. Huy’s research in Australia is funded by a four-year overseas scholarship from the Vietnamese Government and his fieldwork in Vietnam is supported by the ChATSEA project (Challenge of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia), a Canadian-funded project.

Huong Le

BMus (Hons) HNCM, GradDip Sydney, PhD Syndey; Dr. Huong Le is an emerging researcher within the field of arts and culture management. She has industry links to her home country of Vietnam, where she received honours in music from the Hanoi National Conservatorium of Music. Her PhD from the University of Sydney investigated changes in socio-economic conditions, cultural policies and their effects on artistic activities, leadership and management in performing arts organisations in Australia and Vietnam. Prior to joining the Centre for Leisure Managment Research, Deakin University in 2008, Huong worked in the fields of management at the University of Wollongong, was employed in the Research and Evaluation, Planning and Innovation Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Training, Australia, and lectured at the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music, Vietnam. Huong has published internationally in the field of arts and cultural management. She has conducted research and consultancies on the economic position of artists from non-English speaking backgrounds, audience development, social inclusion, tourism and the arts, and Vietnamese cultural policy.

Bao Dat

Dr. Bao Dat is a pedagogist, visual artist and song composer. He provides visual illustrations for textbooks and writes music as a hobby when life inspires. Dat lectures at Monash University and conducts research into creative pedagogy with implications in curriculum design. His recent book Understanding Silence and Reticence (Bloomsbury, 2014) reflects his view on how silence can sometimes become the most meaningful sound in the mind.

Jim Peterson

Dr. Jim Peterson lectures in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University. He was the founding director (1990-2005) of the Centre for Geographic Information Systems at Monash University. His current research focuses on the applications of GIS in environmental and social science focusing on environmental management, with special reference to integrated coastal and catchment management; landscape reconstruction in archaeology and geomorphology. He has initiated and taught over 20 undergraduate and over 20 different graduate course units, has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications and has over 40 credits for higher degree supervision completion for external examination. Recently, Jim was chief investigator in an Australian Teaching & Learning Council-funded project: “Evaluating Teaching & Learning Delivery in Arts and Education Subjects” [www.teachanddelivery.net]. As part of this project he visited Vietnam twice in 2008 to attend and present at Symposia related to discussion of current trends in the Vietnamese higher education sector.

Ly Tran

Dr. Ly Tran is a lecturer in the School of Education at RMIT. Her research focuses on international students’ needs, learning practices, institutional responses and cross-cultural pedagogies. Ly is currently working on an ARC-funded project on the association between international students’ purposes for investing in their courses and their learning practices in the Australian VET sector.

Tin Hong Nguyen

I am a lecturer at the Mekong Delta Development Research Institute (MDI), the University of Cantho, Vietnam. My research interests include the fields of rural and community development, vulnerability context and sustainable livelihoods for the poor and local inhabitant, and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). I gained a Masters of Science in agronomy, and worked NGOs projects (e.g. Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment, SEARICE) on CBNRM since 2000.

Currently, I am a PhD student at the School of Mathematical and Geospatial Science, University of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. My research is to build up a theoretical model for an agricultural management system to determine the capability of land natural resource at regional, local and household levels. The study will integrate and analyse five main capitals including human, social, financial, natural, and physical resources for sustainable livelihoods of land users and factors contribute to the capability of land resource to explore interrelations and interactions between and within those sub-components in the system. They then will be modeled and tested through supporting tools such as Geographic Information System (GIS) to find out optimal scenarios for improvement and management of the land resource. The research conducts a case study in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The study results will be useful for land users, land managers, and land resource developers in term of evaluating critically integrated capability of the land for sustainable land use.

Danh Duc Nguyen

Dr. Danh Duc Nguyen completed his PhD at the School of Education, RMIT and he is currently working as a research assistant at the School of Management, RMIT. Prior to undertaking his PhD study in Australia, Danh Duc Nguyen has been teaching at the Department of Psychology and Education Studies, Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy, Vietnam. His research much focuses on educational innovation in terms of implementing innovative approaches to teaching and learning. He is also interested in introducing innovative strategies of school management in order to enhance learners’ engagement as well as effectively assess learners’ performance.

Ngoc Doan

Mr. Ngoc Doan (in Vietnamese Đoàn Bá Ngọc) is currently undertaking his doctoral study at the University of South Australia (UniSA). His research is investigating the constructs of English as an international language (EIL) and the implications that this model has for the teaching and learning of English in Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Ngoc has obtained a Master of Educational Studies (M.Ed Studies) from the University of Adelaide and a Bachelor of Arts in teaching English (BA in TESOL) from Vietnam National University, Hanoi.

Ngoc has been a full-time lecturer in English, a curriculum developer and material designer at Hanoi National University of Education (HNUE) since 1995. His research interests cover sociolinguistics and pedagogy with particular focus on context-based curriculum development and methodology.