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 been Primary or Chief Investigator of ARC and industry-funded projects totalling $2.1M.

She is one of 5 Chief Investigators on an ARC Discovery Project on "Grandparenting in Australia: A History (1945-2025)" (2025-2028) and recently completed an ARC Discovery Project on the refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia (2018-2024).

Nathalie is the author of 4 books including South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After and 2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title, Memory Is Another Country: Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora (both reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic in 2024), and editor of 4 works including The Routledge Handbook of the Vietnamese Diaspora (Routledge, 2024), the first major reference work in the field. She has published over 50 articles and book chapters. Her latest book is The Refugee Legacy: the Vietnamese Diaspora in the Second Generation (Bloomsbury forthcoming).

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 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.

Monash Units taught (since 2016)

ATS3208 In the Footsteps of Refugees

ATS3476 Vietnam: War, Refugees and Remembrance

ATS3079 Modern China: From the Middle Kingdom to Mao and beyond

ATS3623 Nationality, Ethnicity and Conflict

ATS2596 The Vietnam War

ATS2828 The History of War

ATS1259 Exploring Contemporary Australia

ATS1326 Contemporary Worlds Two

ATS1326 International Studies: Challenges of Globalisation

ATS1020 Global Problems

ATS1610 The Making of the Modern World 1750 to the Present

Monash Guest Lectures and Podcasts

ATS4520 Honours Research Methods

ATS4215 History Archives Workshop

ATS2380 Australia Migrant Nation

ATS2792 Understanding Australia: From the Deep Past to the Present

ATS1319 Global Asia

Link to Academia.edu

Link to Q&A

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

Link to Our Vietnam War (2023) - Nathalie is interviewed in Episode 3 of this three-part documentary series on national broadcaster ABC TV.

Making Public History Series

Link to Refugee Lives, Memories and Communities (2022) - 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.

Link to Oral History, Migration, Generations (2024) - Nathalie hosts a webinar featuring A/Prof Francesco Ricatti, Dr Alexandra Dellios and Prof Tanya Evans as part of the Making Public Histories series.