Lien-Hang Nguyen

Research Interests:
US foreign relations; Southeast Asia; the Cold War
Education

B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1996; Ph.D., Yale University, 2008

Research

United States Foreign Relations/International Cold War

Professor Nguyen specializes in the study of the United States in the world, with spatial focus on Southeast Asia and temporal interest in the Cold War.  She is currently working two projects. The first is a comprehensive history of the 1968 Tet Offensive and the second explores the role of gender, people's diplomacy, and transnational networks of anti-war activism during the Vietnam War.  

She is the author of Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam, which won the Society for Military History (SMH) Edward M. Coffman Prize, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Stuart L. Bernath Prize, the UKY Department of History Alice S. Hallam Prize, was a finalist for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians First Book Prize, and earned her an invitation to participate in the 2012 Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Professor Nguyen is the General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Vietnam War (3 vols.) and she and Professor Paul T. Chamberlin are the Co-Editors of the "Cambridge Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations" Series.     

Selected Fellowships:

  • National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Grant, 2016
  • Henry Chauncey Jr '57 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Grand Strategy, International Security Studies, Yale University, 2009-2010 
  • John M. Olin Postdoctoral Fellowship in Military and International History, International Security Studies, Yale University, 2008-2009
  • Predoctoral Fellowship, John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University, 2005-2006
  • Predoctoral Fellowship, Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, 2004-2005
  • Fulbright Scholar, Hanoi, Vietnam, Institute of International Education, 2001-2002
  • Smith-Richardson Fellow, International Security Studies, Yale University, 1998-2004

Current Students

PhD students:

  • Bethany Sharpe (co-advisor)
  • Jonathan Chilcote (co-advisor)
  • Cody Foster
  • Frances Martin

MA students:

  • Christian Tyler Ruth (co-advisor)
  • Arin Arnold (co-advisor)
Selected Publications:

Books:

  • Tet 1968: The Battles that Changed the Vietnam War and the Global Cold War. (forthcoming, Random House).
  • Women Warriors: Gender, People's Diplomacy, and Peace in the Vietnam Era. (under research)
  • Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, 3 vols. (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
  • Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. The New Cold War History Series. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, July 2012).

Articles/Essays:

  • “Revolutionary Circuits: Toward Internationalizing America in the World,” Diplomatic History 39, Issue 3 (June 2015): 411-422.
  • “1968: Negotiating While Fighting or Just Fighting?” in Guerre, diplomatie et opinion. Les négociations de paix à Paris et la fin de la guerre au Vietnam (1968-1975).  Eds. Pierre Journoud and Cécile Menétrey-Monchau (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011): 37-49.
  • “The Vietnam Decade: The Global Shock of the War,” in Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective.  Eds. Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, Erez Manela, and Daniel Sargent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010): 310-340.
  • “Waging War on All Fronts: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War, 1969-1972” in Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977.  Eds. Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 185-203.
  •  “Cold War Contradictions: Toward an International History of the Second Indochina War, 1969-1973” in Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National and Transnational Perspectives.  Eds. Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn B. Young (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 219-249.
  • “Sino-Vietnamese Split in the Post-Tet War in Indochina, 1968-1975” in The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-1979.  Eds. Sophie Quinn-Judge and Odd Arne Westad (London: Routledge Press, 2006): 12-32.  
  • “Vietnamese Perceptions of the French-Indochina War” in Indochina in the Balance: New Perspectives on the First Vietnam War.  Eds. Mark Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006): 41-55.
  • “The War Politburo: Vietnam’s Diplomatic and Political Road to the Tet Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1, nos. 1-2 (February/August 2006): 4-55.