Cindy A. Nguyen
Historian of Empire and Information
Digital Humanities, Vietnam Studies, Southeast Asia
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
2023- University of California, Los Angeles
Assistant Professor in Department of Information Studies and Digital Humanities Program
2021-2023 University of California, San Diego
UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Department of History and Department of Literature
2019-2021 Brown University
Postdoctoral Fellow in History Department and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities
RESEARCH MANUSCRIPTS
Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam, 1917-1958
Vietnamese Visual Texts: Pluralizing Narratives through Visual Encyclopedia
Pulau Bidong: Transient Communities and Landscapes of Vietnamese Refugee Life, 1975-2005
Distributing Revolution: Propaganda, Statistics, and Information in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975
EDUCATION
2013-2019 University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. in History
Primary Field in Southeast Asia
Second Field in Knowledge Systems: Classification & Colonial Knowledge
Outside Field in Digital Humanities & Data Science
2011-2013 Michigan State University, Master of Arts in History
2006-2010 University of California, Los Angeles, Bachelor of Arts in History and Southeast Asian Studies; Minors: Global Studies, Political Science
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
2023 Research Article: “Collecting through Absence: Fragmenting Vietnamese Refugee Archives,” Wasafiri, Routledge Taylor & Francis (2023) Volume 4, No. 116: 22-30. https://doi.org/10.1080/02690055.2023.2237770.
2022 Book Chapter in Edited Volume: “Creating the National Library in Saigon: Colonial Legacies, Fragmented Collections, and Reading Publics, 1946-1958,” in Building a Republican Nation in Postcolonial Vietnam, 1920-1963, Volume 1, edited by Nu-Anh Tran and Tuong Vu, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2022)
2021 Book Review: Review of Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965-1975 by Olga Dror, Cambridge University Press, 2018. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, (2021) Volume 16, No. 1: 182-188. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2021.16.1.182
2021 Published Conference Proceedings: “Designing the Virtual Rosetta: A Tool for Exploring Historical Drawings in VR” by Anessa Petteruti, Cindy Nguyen, David H. Laidlaw, 6th Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities “The Politics of Scale,” Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers VIS 2021, 24 October, pp. 7-11, doi: 10.1109/VIS4DH53644.2021.00006.
2020 Solo-Authored Research Article in Peer Reviewed Journal: “Reading Rules: The Symbolic and Social Spaces of Reading in the Hanoi Central Library, 1919-1941,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, (2020) Volume 15, No. 3: 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2020.15.3.1
2016 Translation (Vietnamese to English): “The Library of the French School of the Far East” by Ngô Thế Long, Thưviện Học viện Viễn Đông Bác cổ, Tạp chí Thông tin Khoa học xã hội, No.7, 2016. Translated by Cindy A. Nguyen.
2015 Book Chapter in Edited Volume: “A Xu/Sou for the Students: A Discourse Analysis of Vietnamese Student Migration to France in the Late Colonial Period” in The Question of Return: Leaving, Arriving, and Returning in an Age of Transnational Migration, ed. Michiel Baas, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015)
2014 Book Review: “The Cost of Progress,” of Luc Xi: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi by Shaun Kingsley Malarney, New Asia Books, International Institute of Asian Studies, (October 2014): http://www.newbooks.asia/review/cost-progress
DIGITAL PUBLIC HISTORY WORK
Troubling Narratives: Feminist Methods and Ethics of Southeast Asian Studies
Troubling Narratives is a global digital public research collective committed to work through the methods and ethics of Southeast Asian studies through feminist and decolonial practices. It seeks to transform the research and teaching of Southeast Asia through transformative public facing research—interweaving arts, digital communication, and transnational networks of knowledge production and intellectual exchange. I am one of the founders of the initiative, organizing its inaugural roundtable at Association for Asian Studies in Asia (Daegu, South Korea in June 2023). We have been invited to publish our work and are in the process of securing grant funding support.
Vietnamese American Refugee Experience Model Curriculum
The California Department of Education supports the development of this public K-12 curriculum project on the histories of Vietnamese/American communities and will be published in 2025. I am a research faculty and curriculum writer on the project, specializing in histories of Southeast Asia, Vietnam, and colonialism.
Virtual Angkor project (SensiLab, University of Texas, Monash University, Flinders University, Brown University) is an immersive virtual reality and 3D simulation of 13th century Angkor metropolis for teaching history, archaeology, and visual art. The project won the 2018 Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History by the American Historical Association. Since Fall 2019, I have been a research faculty on the project leading the teaching of Virtual Angkor in university courses and have led workshops on Virtual World Building and Diversifying Historical Narratives.
MSU Vietnam Group Archive (Michigan State University, National Endowment for the Humanities, Matrix) is a collection of 80,000 pages of digitized documents, maps, and images of the Michigan State University led technical assistance programs in South Vietnam 1955-1962. From 2012-2013 I worked to develop the interactive map, authoritative keywoards, and timeline visualizations of the collection.
INVITED TALKS
2023 “Pasts and Futures of Libraries in Vietnam,” Lecture and Librarians Exchange, Vietnam National University, University of Social Sciences & Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 27 July
2023 “Colonial Vietnam: Culture and Power” Lecture for the Vietnamese American Refugee Experience Model Curriculum, Orange County Department of Education, 24 July
2023 Vietnamese Library History and Arts Practice, Bilingual Vietnamese-English Lecture, “Phụ nữ viêt Nam Xuyên Văn Hoá,” Nhá xuất bản Phụ nữ Viêt Nam & The Ladder, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8 July
2023 “Reimagining Social Worlds through a Vietnamese Encyclopedia,” Lecture and Pedagogy Workshop, University of California, Irvine, Global Asias Research Cluster, Irvine, 15 May
2023 “Decolonial World Making: Digital Humanities and Southeast Asia,” Lecture, Brown University, Southeast Asian Studies Initiative, Providence, RI, 22 March
2023 “Between Public and Private: A Colonial History of the National Library of Cambodia, Lecture, Center for Khmer Studies, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 10 February
2022 “Breathing Life into Archival Research on Library History in Colonial Vietnam: Challenges and Opportunities,” Lecture, The Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, 15 March
2022 “Virtual World Building in Digital Humanities,” Lecture, University of California San Diego Preparing Accomplished Transfers for the Humanities Program and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 24 February
2021 “International Library History Research,” Lecture, American Libraries Association, Library History Round Table, 12 June
2021 “The Politics of ‘Good Reading’: Libraries and the Public in Late Colonial Vietnam,” Lecture, Yale University, Council on Southeast Asian Studies, New Haven, CT, 7 April
2020 “Docupoetics and Intergenerational Memory: Vietnamese Refugee Narratives and the Language of Home,” Lecture, Artist Talk, and Film Screening, Yale University, Asian Diasporas Panel, New Haven, CT, 11 November
2020 “Translating Across Time and Space,” Lecture, Artist Talk, and Film Screening, Harvard University, Committee on Ethnicity, Rights, and Migration, Cambridge, MA, 21 February
2020 “Contested Histories of Colonial Indochina,” Lecture, Middlesex Community College, Asian Studies Development Program East-West Center, Bedford, MA, 11 February
2017 “Operationalizing Historical Questions: Datafying the Library of Congress Vietnam Collections,” Conference Organizer and Presenter, Texts as Data- Data as Texts Seminar and Workshop at Yonsei University, Seoul, 12 January – Led Lecture & Discussion
2016 “Lịch sử Thư viện Việt Nam 1887-1986: Phương pháp tiếp cận nghiên cứu của đại học Hoa kỳ” (History of Libraries in Vietnam: American Research Methods), Lecture, Vietnam National University (Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội – Trường Đại học Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn), Hanoi, Vietnam, 23 December
2016 “Lịch sử Thư viện Việt Nam 1887-1986” (A Survey of Libraries in Vietnam in the 20th Century) Lecture, Institute of Social Sciences Information (Viện thông tin khoa học xã hội), Hanoi, Vietnam, 4 November
TEACHING EXPERIENCE AND TEACHING AWARDS
University of California, Los Angeles, 2023-
- Introduction to Digital Humanities: Graduate seminar on digital technologies for humanities research focused on project management, research design, computational analysis, and public communication (Winter 2024)
- Global History of Libraries: Graduate course on history of libraries as spaces for reading, education, and information, with a focus on Asia and Western Europe 16th-20th centuries (Spring 2024)
- Decolonial Data Lab: Undergraduate humanities advanced course focused on critical data studies, research design and experimentation, and multilingual text analysis (Spring 2024)
Brown University, 2019-2021
Contested Histories of Colonial Indochina: Undergraduate seminar on history, culture, and politics of French colonial Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Fall 2019, Fall 2020)
Virtual Reality and Visual Analysis Teaching Module and Collaboration with Multimedia Lab, Received Brown course development grant to apply digital humanities Angkor teaching module to courses in remote learning environments (Fall 2020)
Colonial Narratives and Visual Representation in Vietnam: Undergraduate independent study in department of Modern Culture & Media and History (Fall 2020)
Print and Power in Modern Southeast Asia: Undergraduate/graduate seminar on print culture and government legibility in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam (Spring 2020)
Digital Teaching Faculty Facilitator, Anchor Course Design Institute
Recruited as faculty facilitator to assist faculty in digital teaching and course design (Summer 2020, Fall 2020)
University of California, Berkeley, 2014-2016
Mao & Chinese Communism: Graduate Student Instructor of undergraduate course UC Berkeley (Spring 2015)
History of Vietnam: Graduate Student Instructor of undergraduate course UC Berkeley (Fall 2014)
University of California, Los Angeles, 2008-2011
Academic Peer Learning Supervisor & Facilitator, UCLA Division of Undergraduate Education Supervised 100 undergraduate tutors for campus-wide Peer Learning Tutoring Services for ESL, Math & Sciences, and Athletics academic support
Digital Pedagogy Lab, 2020
Faculty Group Leader and Participant, Received scholarship to bring a team of Brown undergraduates to workshop critical approaches to online and remote learning for the future
Independent Digital Humanities Advising, 2020
Advisor, Designed digital humanities curricula and project development of “Art of Dissent” visual analysis of Hong Kong protest art
DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS
2023-Present. Principal Investigator, “Social library,” open database on Vietnamese cosmopolitan world of writing and reading (intellectuals, library circulation); Seeking Funding
2020-Present Principal Investigator, “Vietnamese Visual Texts,” Content, visual, and material analysis of colonial era collaborative texts; Funded by Brown Connect Collaborative Sprint Awards; Seeking Funding
2019-Present Research Faculty, “Virtual Angkor,” Digital teaching of virtual reality simulation of 13th century Angkor temple complex; Development of teaching module for Brown University
2016-2018 Co-Principal Investigator, “Deconstructing Libraries: A Dual Approach to Historical Research and Machine Learning” Library of Congress Data Science Project – Report
2014-2016 Co-Principal Investigator, “Vietnamese Intellectual Networks Database” , funded through Andrew W. Mellon – UC Berkeley Digital Humanities Fellowship
2014-2015 Research Project and Presenter, “On Examining a Peripheral Text: Henri Oger & Technique du Peuple Annamite”- Poster
2013 Presenter and Participant, “Visualizing Vietnamese Print Culture and Print Industry,” Digital History School, Umea University Sweden
2013 Visualization and Research Lead, “Detroit Digital” Cultural Heritage Informatics Field School, Michigan State University
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & ART ACCOLADES
2021 Vietnamese Boat People Journeys Map, Digital Humanities Advisor
2020-2021 Filmmaker, “Translating Across Time and Space: Rewriting the Landscape and Narrative of ‘Refugee’, funded by the Brown Arts Initiative Development Grant
2020 Art Publication and Art Exhibition, “Train/Xe lửa” and “Confessions of a Vietnamese Refugee” Publication in Pank Magazine Vietnamese Folio, forthcoming
Exhibition in the “Textures of Remembrance: Vietnamese Artists and Writers Reflect on the Fall of Saigon (Oakland Asian Cultural Center and Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network)
2020 Invited Panelist, “Intergenerational Communication and Everyday Language,” Oakland Asian Cultural Center
2019 Short Film, “The Undeniable Force of Khó Khăn” film
Featured at Viet Film Festival (2019), semi-finalist for Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (2020)
Published release in Diacritics.org, “This is for mẹ”, and AJAR Press
2018 Writer, If-Me.org mental health non-profit and open source project. Essay “An Asian American’s Language of Mental Health”
2018 Lecturer, “History & Memory of Vietnamese Refugees” Lecture at Pawcatuck Middle School, CT
2017 Art Publication, “Train/Xe lửa” Bi-lingual poetry on History, Memory, and Language in independent Vietnamese and global publisher Ajar Press, issue 5, song song || para||el, Fall
LANGUAGES & DIVERSE SKILLS
- Vietnamese: Native fluency in reading, speaking, advanced writing
- French: Advanced reading, intermediate speaking, writing
- Visual: Virtual Reality, 360 Video, Film Production, Photography
- Data & Databases: MySQL, Relational Databases, Open Refine, Text Analysis
- Text Analysis & Topic Modeling: Mallet, Natural Language Toolkit, Voyant
- Content Management Systems: Drupal, WordPress, Canvas, GitHub
- GIS: ArcGIS, QGIS
- Visualization: Tableau, Palladio, Voyant, Gephi, timeline.js
- Project Management, Digital Research Project Consulting, Startup and Organization Operations
Cindy A. Nguyen 