Nhu Truong

Nhu Truong specializes in the study of authoritarian politics and social resistance in Southeast Asia. Her research maps the shifting parameters of repressiveness-responsiveness in authoritarian regimes and illuminates the contentious dynamics of people’s resistance. Her current book project, Authoritarian Expropriation: Reactive and Institutionalized Responsiveness in Vietnam, China, and Cambodia specifically examines the endemic dispossession of land from villagers and the perplexing nature of why these regimes differ in their arbitration of social conflict and citizen’s demand for social justice. Truong’s work tackles authoritarianism and social resistance through comparative ontological perspective, the lens of history, contextual knowledge, intensive fieldwork, archival research, careful conceptualization, and theory-building. Her focus on everyday societal perspectives and state-society conflicts is rooted in a long-standing commitment to Southeast Asia that values language acquisition and connections across disciplinary boundaries.

Truong has published in Democratization, Journal of East Asian Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and with Cambridge University Press. Her research has been supported by various grants and fellowships, including the Senior Research Fellowship from the Center for Khmer Studies, the Rosenberg Institute Scholar Fellowship from Suffolk University, the Asia Workshops Alumni Professional Development Grant from the American Political Science Association (APSA), and the Southeast Asia Research Group Pre-Dissertation Fellowship.

With the aim of advancing wider scholarship and meaningful engagements with Southeast Asia, Truong has served as Program Chair of the APSA Southeast Asian Politics Group (2022-2024), Southeast Asia Council Member of the Association of Asian Studies (2024-2027), and Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2024-current). She also actively engages in public scholarship that places Southeast Asia and grassroots interests at the center of public discourse and policy dialogues as a Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network Fellow and contributor to public outlets including New Mandala, Fulcrum (ISEAS), and Nikkei Asia, and the International Institute for Asian Studies Podcast (Leiden).

Truong was selected as Southeast Asia Research Group Fellow, a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia in the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University, and a New Faces in China Studies Fellow. Truong received her PhD in Political Science specializing in comparative politics with an area focus on Southeast Asia and East Asia from McGill University. Before pursuing her doctoral studies, she completed an MPA in International Policy and Management at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, an MA in Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in International Studies, with a minor in Asian Studies at Kenyon College.