Academy Fellow

Nathalie Nguyen is Professor of History at Monash University. She arrived in Australia as a child refugee with her family after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Oxford and former ARC Future Fellow, she is a leading international scholar with a distinguished publication record in innovative research areas, namely the Vietnamese diaspora, South Vietnam during the Vietnam War and in its aftermath, and Vietnamese francophone literature. She was listed as one of 15 “Prominent Australians from a refugee and humanitarian background” in the Refugee Council of Australia’s Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration of the Australian Parliament in 2013. Her work focuses on memory, war and migration, and her aim has been to provide a voice for a distinctive refugee and minority community while exploring issues of central concern for migrant nations in the 21st century. She is an expert on oral history projects involving the Vietnamese community in Australia, and her work has led to the creation of two key new oral history collections at the National Library of Australia.

Her fellowships include two prestigious ARC Fellowships back-to-back in 2005-15, a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Oxford, and Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia. Her latest grants include an ARC Discovery Project on the refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia.

Nathalie is the author of four books, three of which have been translated into other languages, and over 40 book chapters and articles. Her books include: South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After, which was launched at the University of California, Berkeley, and UNSW Australian Defence Force Academy; 2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Memory Is Another Country: Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora; Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives, which was shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; and Vietnamese Voices: Gender and Cultural Identity in the Vietnamese Francophone Novel. Her publications as editor include New Perceptions of the Vietnam War and the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of the Vietnamese Diaspora.

Her essay on Australian responses to the Vietnamese refugee crisis in 1975 in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society won the 2015 Mander Jones Award from the Australian Society of Archivists for the "Best publication that uses, features or interprets Australian archives." Her essay on war, diaspora and the memories of South Vietnamese soldiers was featured in the 2014 Journal of Intercultural Studies Editors Choice Collection.

Her submissions to Senate Select Committees on Issues facing diaspora communities in Australia and on Strengthening Multiculturalism were published on the Australian Parliament website in 2017 and 2020. 

2021               Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia

2018-21          ARC Discovery Project, Australian Research Council

2016               2015 Mander Jones Award, Australian Society of Archivists

2014               Editors’ Choice Collection, Journal of Intercultural Studies

2011-15          ARC Future Fellow, Australian Research Council

2011               Visiting Research Fellow, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

2011               2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

2010-11          Principal Fellow, The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne

2007               Harold White Fellow, National Library of Australia

2007               2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Shortlisted

2005-10          ARC Australian Research Fellow, Australian Research Council

1. NGUYEN, NHC (2021) “‘The Missing Ones’: Vietnamese Diasporic Memory and Women’s Narratives of Loss.” Gender and Trauma since 1900. Eds. Paula Michaels and Christina Twomey. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 185-200.
2. NGUYEN, NHC (2021) “Making Sense of the Past: The Vietnamese Diaspora in Australia and Transgenerational Histories.” Routledge Handbook of Asian Diaspora and Development. Ed. Ajaya K. Sahoo. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 17-29.
3. NGUYEN, NHC (2021) “The Past in the Present: Life Narratives and Trauma in the Vietnamese Diaspora.” Translating Worlds: Migration, Memory, and Culture. Eds. Susannah Radstone and Rita Wilson. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 41-55.
4. NGUYEN, NHC (2016) South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. xx + 289pp.
5. NGUYEN, NHC (2009) Memory Is Another Country: Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. xii + 212pp.