An award-winning researcher, Professor Nathalie Nguyen is a leading international scholar on the Vietnamese diaspora and the experiences of Vietnamese refugees. A Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University and former ARC Future Fellow, her work focuses on memory, war and migration. She is an expert on oral history projects involving the Vietnamese in Australia, and her work has led to the creation of 2 key new oral history collections at the National Library of Australia. In 2021, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Nathalie has won $1.65M as Primary Chief Investigator of ARC and industry-funded projects.

She held 4 fellowships in 2005-15: 2 prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC) fellowships back-to-back including an ARC Future Fellowship (2011-15) to work on Vietnamese veterans and an ARC Australian Research Fellowship (2005-10) to work on Vietnamese women of the diaspora; a 2011 Visiting Fellowship at Oxford University; and a 2007 Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia.

Her latest grants are an ARC Discovery Project on the refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia (2018-21 extended to 2022) and a Category 2-3 grant from the Australian Vietnamese Women's Association to work on "Pathways to Prevention: Vietnamese Offenders in Victoria" (2020-21).

For 6 years, she was based at the National Centre for Australian Studies (NCAS) at Monash, first as an ARC Future Fellow, as NCAS Research Coordinator (2014-15) then as Deputy Director and Acting Director of NCAS (2016), and Director of NCAS (2017). She served as a Faculty executive on the Faculty Leadership Advisory Group (FLAG), Arts Executive Committee and Heads of School group in 2016-17.

After the closure of NCAS, she joined the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies (SOPHIS) in 2018.

Nathalie is the author of 4 books, three of which have been translated into other languages, and editor of 3 publications.

Her books include: South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After (Praeger, 2016), launched at Boston College, 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 (Praeger, 2009);Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives (Common Ground, 2005), which was shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; and Vietnamese Voices: Gender and Cultural Identity in the Vietnamese Francophone Novel (Northern Illinois University Monograph Series on Southeast Asia No. 6, 2003).

Her 3 publications as editor are: New Perceptions of the Vietnam War: Essays on the War, the South Vietnamese Experience, the Diaspora and the Continuing Impact (McFarland, 2015); and Special Issues on Vietnam and Southeast Asian Diasporas of the refereed journals Intersections (2009) and Crossroads (2008).

Nathalie's essay on Australian responses to the Vietnamese refugee crisis in 1975 in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (Cambridge University Press) 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 in the Journal of Intercultural Studies (Taylor & Francis) was in the 2014 Journal of Intercultural Studies Editors Choice Collection.

Nathalie was commissioned by Dorothea Schaefter, Senior Editor, Asian Studies, Routledge, to edit the Routledge Handbook of the Vietnamese Diaspora (forthcoming 2023).

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.

Monash Units taught (since 2016)

ATS3208 In the Footsteps of Refugees

ATS2596 The Vietnam War

ATS1326 Contemporary Worlds Two

ATS1259 Exploring Contemporary Australia

Monash Guest Lectures and Podcasts

ATS4520 Honours Research Methods

ATS4215 History Archives Workshop

ATS2380 Australia Migrant Nation

ATS1319 Global Asia

Link to Academia.edu

Link to Q&A

Link to ABC Radio National The Book Club - Nathalie comments on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Committed (2021) and Nam Le's The Boat (2008).

Link to Refugee Lives, Memories and Communities - Nathalie hosts a webinar featuring A/Prof Ruth Balint, Ms Chi Vu and A/Prof Shameran Slewa-Younan as part of the Making Public Histories series.