Minh Nguyen will hold a symposium titled: »New Directions in Anthropological and Sociological Research on Vietnam« on October 13th 2022.

Minh Nguyen and Phill Wilcox are convening a panel at the DGS conference entitled Rural Futures in Late Socialist Asia: the Countryside in a Globalising World. It features speakers from China, Vietnam and Germany. We are delighted to welcome a discussant, Professor Jonathan Rigg from Bristol University. Full details of our panel are available here.

We are pleased to announce the WelfareStruggles Policy Brief Series is now available online. This series is edited by Prof. Minh Nguyen and features short comparative assessments of a number of key issues that characterise the institutional contexts of labour mobility and welfare provision in China and Vietnam. These issues are directly implicated in the politics around the care of the migrant labour force that we are investigating in this project. The Policy Brief is written for a broad range of audience, including NGO workers, policy makers, researchers, students, and anyone interested in the similarities and differences between the Chinese and Vietnamese institutional contexts. 

Minh Nguyen is serving as a Steering Committee member of the 3rd UK-GERMAN FRONTIERS OF HUMANITIES SYMPOSIUM on 09 - 10 May 2022 (virtual conference). This year’s conference draws on the insights of the humanities and social sciences on the theme of ‘Mobilities’, exploring how mobilities have shaped, are shaping, and will shape our environments – both social and natural – and our interaction with them, through time. The symposium’s program can be downloaded here. 

Minh Nguyen (Bielefeld University) and Nicolas Lainez (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) will convene the panel The Financialization of Everyday Life in Vietnam in the 2022 EUROSEAS Conference. Allison Truitt will be the panel discussant. Minh Nguyen and Minh Ngoc Luong from Bielefeld University will present their papers in this panel. For further information please follow the link.

Phill Wilcox (Bielefeld University) and Simon Rowedder (Passau University) will convene the panel Negotiating China in Southeast Asia: (re)thinking development via infrastructure schemes in the 2022 EUROSEAS Conference. For further information please follow the link. 

The international workshop Reconfiguring Vietnam is taking place on 21-22 April 2022 at the Max Planck for Social Anthropology in Halle as a hybrid event. Convened by Minh Nguyen and Kirsten Endres, it is a collaboration between the institute and AG Social Anthropology of Bielefeld's Faculty of Sociology.

The workshop will recaste the economic lives of Vietnamese living in Vietnam and beyond, i.e. the penetration of global finance, ideas of entrepreneurship, digitalization of economic activities and integration of Vietnamese labour into the global labor market through translocal and transnational migration. In particular, the workshop will address three themes: a) Gender and Private Life, b) Culture and Identity, c) Class and Consumption. For further information please follow the link. 

Phill Wilcox has been invited to give comments on a keynote speech by Professor Tim Oakes (University of Colorado-Boulder) at a conference hosted by the Finnish Society for Development Research - Development Days 2022 on 17-18 February 2022.

Researchers from the social anthropology working group attended the 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars convened (virtually) in Kyoto, Japan. Dr Jake Lin convened a panel entitled 'Migrant labour and Welfare Restructuring in China and Vietnam'. Dr Phill Wilcox co-convened a panel entitled 'Aspiring to the "Chinese dream": Local Perceptions of Chinese Globalisation and Development in Asia'. Both researchers also presented papers in their respective panels.

Social anthropology staff will also attend (online) the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies Conference in September 2021. Professor Minh Nguyen is an invited discussant for a panel entitled 'Between Perils and Promises of Mobility: Aspiration, Possibility and the "Good Life" in Southeast Asia'. Dr Phill Wilcox is convening a panel entitled: 'The Power of Gastronomy: Changing Urban Foodscapes in Southeast Asia' and is presenting her recently published article entitled 'Doing Coffee in Luang Prabang: Fusion and the Making of a World Heritage Space'.