EWV Fourth Conference – Engaging With Vietnam

Hawaii

2012

THE 4th “ENGAGING WITH VIETNAM: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE” CONFERENCE

8-9 November 2012
The Imin Conference Center, East-West Center, Honolulu, the USA

ORGANIZING PARTNERS

Monash University, The East-West Center, The University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and The University of Social Sciences and Humanities - Vietnam National University Hanoi

WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM

The Australian Consulate-General, Honolulu

CO-CHAIRS AND CO-CONVENERS

Dr. Phan Lê Hà (Monash University) and Dr. Charles E. Morrison (East-West Center) together with the Organizing Committee: Prof Stephanie Fahey (Monash University), A/Prof. Phạm Quang Minh (VNU Hanoi), Ambassador Raymond Burghardt (EWC), Dr. Terance Bigalke (EWC), Dr. Nancy D. Lewis (EWC), A/Prof Liam Kelley (University of Hawai’i at Manoa), and Dr. Tung Bui (University of Hawai’i at Manoa)

CONFERENCE SECRETARIES

Lê Thùy Linh (Monash University) and June Kuramoto (EWC)

THEME

Vietnam Beyond the Boundaries

The first “Engaging with Vietnam: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue” conference was held in 2010 at Monash University and featured Vietnam-related work by Vietnamese and international researchers and research students in Australian universities and organizations. The second and third conferences moved to Vietnam, and saw the added participation of scholars and research students based in Vietnam, Southeast Asia and various other countries around the world. For this fourth “Engaging with Vietnam” conference we wish to move our center of gravity once again in order to involve new participants, and also to gain the inspiration which comes from moving beyond familiar boundaries.

The 4th Engaging Vietnam Conference will continued the traditions developed in the three previous conferences in Hanoi and Melbourne emphasizing policy-relevant interdisciplinary and international academic research and dialogue between Vietnamese and foreign scholars interested in Vietnam. One of the key identities of the Engaging with Vietnam Conference is its interdisciplinary research rigor that places knowledge, research and scholarship as well as policy-research dialogues at the core of its agendas. It has brought speakers from various fields across the social sciences, humanities, education, diplomacy and policy to engage in these questions. The 4th Conference was also the first general conference on a broad range of Vietnam related topics held in the United States for some time. It featured keynote panels consisting of scholars, diplomats and policy makers speaking directly to the key foci of the conference.

The conference focused on several areas of keen interest to Vietnam in its relations with outside countries: historical and contemporary international relationships (including with Australia, China, and the United States); issues of language, culture, ideology and identity that has placed Vietnam scholarship in heated academic debates among scholars; issues of economic development and business relationships; issues concerning educational reforms with regards to nation building, globalization, internationalization and social justice; and climate change and other related environment and resource issues.

Download the Program for EWV #4

Keynote and invited speakers

Tuong Vu

Dr. Tuong Vu is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, and has held visiting fellowships at the National University of Singapore and Princeton University. His book, Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia (Cambridge, 2010), received a 2011 Bernard Schwartz Award Honorable Mention. He is also co-editor of Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture (Palgrave, 2009) and Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (Stanford, 2008). His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including World Politics, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, South East Asia Research, and Theory and Society. Currently he is writing a book about the Vietnamese revolution as a case of radical movements in international politics.

Pierre Asselin

Dr. Pierre Asselin is Professor of History at Hawai’i Pacific University. His area of primary expertise is the history of American foreign relations with a focus on East and Southeast Asia and the larger Cold War context. He is a leading authority on the Vietnam War and, specifically, the decision-making of Vietnamese communist authorities in the period 1954-75. He speaks Vietnamese and regularly travels to Vietnam for research. His interest in internationalism and transnationalism during the Vietnam War has taken him to various other document repositories, including the Algerian National Archives.

Asselin is the author of A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), winner of the 2003 Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize, and Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (University of California Press, 2013), winner of the 2013 Arthur Goodzeit Book Award. He recently completed his third book, Vietnam’s American War: A History (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming [January 2018]), which surveys the Vietnamese communist experience during the conflict. Other recent and notable publications include “The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the 1954 Geneva Conference: A Revisionist Critique” in Cold War History (2011); “Revisionism Triumphant: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy in the Nixon Era” in Journal of Cold War Studies (2011); and “‘We Don’t Want a Munich’: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy, 1965-1968” in Diplomatic History (2012).

Asselin is co-editor of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming [2020]). His latest book-project is a history of the “global Vietnam War” casting the American war in Vietnam as a global political, social, and cultural phenomenon that irrevocably changed the world and served as harbinger for myriad international and transnational causes. In addition to relating the history of the conflict itself, the book addresses the war’s effects in the United States, Western Europe, the Communist World, and the so-called Third World.

Charles E. Morrison

Dr. Charles E. Morrison has been president of the East-West Center since 1998. He has been associated with the Center since 1980 in various capacities, including heading its former Institute of Economics and Politics. A U.S. Senate aide early in his career, he has also been a research associate at the Japan Center for International Exchange. Morrison has served as the international chair of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council since 2005, and is a member of other national and international bodies that promote trans-Pacific security and economic cooperation. His Ph.D. is from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he also once taught on Southeast Asia. He speaks and publishes widely on U.S. Asia policy issues and the countries of the region, and gives special emphasis to regional cooperation, particularly the APEC process.

Publications in recent years include Four Adjectives Become a Noun: APEC the Future of Asia-Pacific Cooperation; An APEC Trade Agenda? The Political Economy of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific; Leadership Succession and U.S. Foreign Policy: Implications for East Asia; Japan, ASEAN, and East Asia from an American Perspective.

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.

Liam C. Kelley

Dr. Liam Kelley is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the Univeristy of Hawaii at Manoa. His research and teaching focuses on mainland Southeast Asian history, and premodern Vietnamese history. He has published a book on envoy poetry (thơ đi sứ), co-edited a book on China’s Southern frontiers, and published articles and book chapters on the invention of traditions in medieval Vietnam, the emergence of Vietnamese nationalism and spirit writing (giáng bút) in early twentieth century Vietnam. He has also completed English translations of the outer annals (ngoại kỷ) of the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư and the Khâm định Việt sử thông giám cương mực. Dr. Kelley is currently writing a monograph on the modern search for Viet origins and developing his arts-inspired interests on knowledge production which can be found on his personal blog (leminhkhai.wordpress.com) and its associated YouTube channel.

Dr. Liam Kelley, since 2011, has been co-developing the Engaging with Vietnam initiative with Dr. Phan Lê Hà.

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).

Lê Đăng Doanh

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.

Carlyle A. Thayer

Dr. Carlyle A. Thayer is Emeritus Professor, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. He was educated at Brown and holds an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Yale and a PhD in International Relations from The Australian National University. Professor Thayer is a Vietnam country expert and a Southeast Asia regional specialist. He has over 400 publications to his name including: Vietnam People’s Army: Development and Modernization (Bandar Seri Begawan: Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, 2009) and War By Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954-1960 (Boston and London: Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1989).

A/Professor Tran Hong Thai

Nancy D. Lewis

Director, Research Program

Dr. Nancy D. Lewis brings extensive research, administrative, teaching and outreach, and international scientific leadership experience to the East-West Center (www.eastwestcenter.org) as the Director of the Research Program.

Nancy was recruited to the East-West Center from the University of Hawaii at Manoa where she served as the Associate Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Professor of Geography with affiliate appointments in Public Health, Pacific Island Studies, Women’s Studies and Urban and Regional Planning. Nancy has long been involved with the Pacific Science Association (www.Pacificscience.org), a regional, interdisciplinary science organization, and she currently serves as PSA president. She has led the organization’s efforts to promote women and science for over a decade. Nancy has also served on the gender advisory board of the International Federation of Institutes of Advanced Study and on the founding board of the International Association for Ecology and Health. She is a past president of the Hawaii chapter of Sigma Xi and serves and has served on the editorial boards of Pacific Science, EcoHealth, and Ethics, Place and Environment. She also serves (ex-officio) on the US National Research Council for the Pacific Science Association.

Nancy’s research has revolved around the intersection between health and the environment, exploring the geography of health and disease; health and development; gender and ‘safe womahood’; and currently climate change and health; and globalization, health and human security. She has over thirty years of field experience in the Pacific Islands and more recent experience in East, South and Southeast Asia.

Nancy holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in geography, a M.S. in health and medical science, and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow in the mid-1980’s and was awarded an EWC teaching award for most outstanding instructor. She has received a number of grants, fellowships and awards, is the author of numerous professional publications, and has served as a consultant for national and international organizations.

Tran Duc Vien

Dr. Tran Duc Vien is an Associate Professor of the Hanoi University of Agriculture where he has served as the Rector since late 2006. He teaches course on agroecology, farming system research and development, and environmental management. He played a key role in the creation of the HUA Center for Agricultural Research and Environmental Studies (CARES) and serves as its director. CARES is a multi-disciplinary center with a mandate to do research designed to help farmers enhance their knowledge, increase agricultural productivity, and encourage environmental protection and sustainable development of agricultural and rural areas. He has conducted research on upland development in Vietnam for many years, often working in collaboration with researchers from different disciplines and institutions, both national and international. While trained as a crop and land management scientist (Ph.D. from HUA 1998) his research has focused on the relationship between the different cultures, farming systems, and the environment of Vietnam’s mountains. He is particularly concerned with the relationship between the diverse indigenous cultures found in the different parts of the uplands and the farming systems on which they rely for their subsistence. He has published numerous articles, reports, and book. He is lead editor of Farming with Fire and Water: The human Ecology of a Composite Swiddening Community in Vietnam’s Northern Mountains (2009, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University).

Michael DiGregorio

Dr. Michael DiGregorio is a scholar, filmmaker and philanthropy professional. As a Ford Foundation program officer in Vietnam, he developed, funded and guided programs in support of the renovation of the social sciences, training in urban planning; redevelopment of Vietnam’s documentary and feature film industries; preservation of unique and endangered cultural heritage, and support for socially engaged contemporary arts. He oversaw a total of $35 million in grants to Vietnamese and foreign individuals and institutions. Michael’s work with the Ford Foundation earned him a reputation for developing innovative programs, under difficult circumstances, through engagement with government, professionals, and concerned and affected communities.

Michael currently works as a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation funded Asia Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) through which he has conducted research, developed funding proposals, and facilitated professional trainings. Michael is also a director and producer of documentary films and television series with experience working with international broadcasters, non-governmental organizations, and international media funds.

Michael earned a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 with a dissertation on the cultural economy of industrializing craft villages in the Red River Delta. He received an MA in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Hawaii in 1993. Michael’s MA thesis, was published by the East West Center in 1994 as Urban Harvest: Recycling as a Peasant Industry in Northern Vietnam.

Tung Bui

Matson Navigation Co. Chair Professor Graduate Chair and Director, PhD Program in International Management Director, Pacific Research Institute for Information System Management Co-Director, APEC Study Center

Since 1997, Dr. Bui holds the distinguished professorship of global business endowed by the Matson Navigation Company, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He currently serves as Director of the Ph.D Program in International Management. He earned a doctorate in managerial economics from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland (1980) and a Ph.D. in information systems from the Stern School of Business, New York University (1986). Prior to joining the University of Hawaii, Prof. Bui was on the faculty at the United States Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, New York University, the Universities of Fribourg and Lausanne, Switzerland, the University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a regular speaker worldwide.

Prof. Bui has published 11 books and over 110 papers. His current research interests focus on effective management of large organizations, electronic commerce, sustainable development, and in collaborative technology, including group decision and negotiation support systems. In 1993, a research journal nominated him as “one of the most influential researchers in the field of decision support systems” based on citation. He won best paper awards at the 1996 Hawaii International Conference in System Sciences and at the Decision Science Institute conference (2000). Many of his papers were nominated best papers: Professor Bui is journal department editor of INFORMS Group Decision and Negotiation, and Journal of Electronic Commerce Research. He is also associate/senior editor of the Journal of the Association of Information Systems, the Journal of Decision Systems, the Journal of Electronic Business, the Journal of International Technology Theory and Applications, and the newly created International Journal of Information Systems and Management, and former associate editor of the Journal of MIS, and Communications of AIS.

Professor Bui has been a regular consultant and advisor to both governmental and private organizations on a number of public policies to include national and regional planning and business process re-engineering. He is the Director of the Pacific Research Institute on Information Systems Management (PRIISM) and the co-director of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) UH studies center. He has chaired ten major international conferences, and is a regular program committee member of international meetings and workshops. Among other professional activities, he is also an active member of the International Public Management Network whose interest is on reinventing government. With the government of Thailand, Bui headed a joint project funded by APEC to promote e-commerce in East Asia with a publication titled “E-commerce Readiness in East Asia”, a video on e-commerce practice in Asia, and a number of e-commerce workshops in Bangkok, Thailand. He was the leader of a five-year leadership training program funded by the Provincial Government of Guangdong, China to train senior government officials as part of China’s preparation to enter WTO (1999-2004).

In Hawaii, Bui supports the use of information technology to support the State economy. He is the author of an award winning report on the “E-commerce Trends in Hawaii – 2000”. He appears regularly on local televisions, radios and newspapers to promote economic development and global business. Bui is the recipient of the 2003 U.S. Department of Commerce SBA Small Business Research Advocate Award for the State of Hawaii and the Western region of the U.S. As a Vietnamese-American, Bui has contributed to promoting U.S. involvement in education and training in Vietnam. He served as an advisor to the Vietnamese Minister on Education and Training (1994-95). Among other activities, he is actively involved in various education, training and research programs in Vietnam. He is currently the principal investigator of a project to develop sustainable plans for four most modern Learning Resource Centers in Vietnam (Hue, Danang, Can Tho and Thai Nguyen), and to build Academic English capacity in the country. In 2011 he received the National Medal from Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training in recognition of his contribution to advancing education in Vietnam and has been appointed as a honorary professor at the University of Hue, Vietnam.

Jefferson Fox

Dr. Jefferson Fox is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He received his Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. He studies land-use and land-cover change in Asia and the possible cumulative impact of these changes on the region and the global environment. Dr. Fox has co-edited several books, most recently, People and the Environment: Approaches for Linking Household and Community Surveys to Remote Sensing and GIS (Kluwer Academic Press, 2003). His ongoing research includes “Coupled Natural-Human Systems and Emerging Infectious Diseases: Anthropogenic Environmental Change and Avian Influenza in Vietnam” funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, and “The Expansion of Rubber and its Implications for Water and Carbon Dynamics in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia” funded by NASA. He is P.I. on a grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor entitled “Natural Resource Management, Democracy, and Human Rights: Building Capacity for Community-Based Resource Management: Enhancing Resource Rights, and Strengthening Civil Society in Kachin State.” He is also co-P.I. on a grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs entitled: ‘Rural to Urban Transitions and the Peri-Urban Interface: Identifying, Mapping, and Understanding Peri-Urban Areas in India and Pakistan.” He has worked in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China (Yunnan), Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam.