PhD Candidate
Southeast Asia/ Vietnam in the 20th Century
About me
As a part of Fulbright University Vietnam's inaugural cohort in 2018, Khánh-Minh Bùi was introduced to History as a research field and in particular the international scholarship of Vietnam's 20th-century history. During her undergraduate study, Khánh-Minh enjoyed working as a research assistant to Dr. Andrew Bellisari for his project on African soldiers in the First Indochina War and its aftermath (1946 - 1964), receiving first-hand experience of archival research in Hà Nội and later Hồ Chí Minh City. In her senior year, Khánh-Minh completed her capstone project, titled “Converting Mistaken Girls: The Communist Rehabilitation of Prostitution in Sài Gòn (Hồ Chí Minh City) during the First Post-War Decade (1975 - 1985)". The thesis spans across three chapters, using archival documents in Vietnam and international repositories to study how postwar exigencies determined the policies and the rhetoric behind the rehabilitation of sex workers in post-1975 Sài Gòn. For this work, Khánh-Minh received the Nguyễn Khắc Viện prize for best History senior thesis and graduated from Fulbright University Vietnam with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in History in June 2023.
Starting from August 2024, Khánh-Minh will begin her Doctoral study in History at University of California, Berkeley. Under the advisorship of Professor Peter Zinoman, she will continue to expand her study of the making of postwar Vietnam against the backdrop of the Cold War coming into its final decades. Prior to coming to Berkeley, inspired by her undergraduate studies, Khánh-Minh ran an independent online course titled "HIS & LIT: Learning academic English via Vietnamese History and Literature," offering lectures and academic assignments on late 19th and 20th century Vietnam as context for training English as a secondary language for Vietnamese learners from high school to graduate levels
Education
UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States September 2024 – now
Department of History
PhD Candidate
Fulbright University Vietnam, HCMC, Vietnam September 2018 – June 2023
Major: History | GPA: 3.73
Bachelor of Arts in History with Honors
History Capstone Thesis: “‘Converting Mistaken Girls’: The Rehabilitation of Prostitution in Saigon (Ho Chi
Minh City) during the First Post-war Decade (1975–1985). Winner: Nguyễn Khắc Viện Prize for Best Senior
Capstone Thesis, AY 2022-23 (major-wide).
