Vietnam’s Emerging Civil Society: Fifteen Prominent Figures (English version)
Xã hội Dân sự ở Việt nam: 15 Gương mặt Nổi bật (Vietnamese version)
Ongoing Book Project (2023-2025)
US-Vietnam Research Center in collaboration with Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV)
Editors: Trinh Huu Long, Nguyen Luong Hai Khoi, and Tuong Vu
Description of book
This book introduces fifteen influential individuals in contemporary social, cultural, and intellectual fields in Vietnam. These individuals have been on the forefront of movements to promote or support human rights, equality, freedom of press and association, democratic governance, environmental protection, and private property rights. The book will include a brief introduction by Tuong Vu, and their biographical profiles, brief interviews, and samples of their work.
The purpose of the book is to understand, appreciate, and promote the young and dynamic society of Vietnam and the rich cultural life of Vietnamese. While Vietnam is still under communist rule that imposes many restrictions on basic freedoms such as freedoms of speech and association, in the last decade the country has witnessed the growth of a civil society and a cosmopolitan culture. The individuals profiled in the book both represent those trends and are themselves leaders or pioneers in their fields, contributing significantly to the emergence of a vibrant civil society in Vietnam.
Once the manuscript is completed, we plan to publish the book in both English and Vietnamese languages with trade presses. Through this book we hope to contribute to empowering Vietnam’s emerging civil society by recognizing its leaders. This book will be useful for foreigners and Vietnamese to know about the rapidly changing Vietnamese society through those important figures. For scholars and researchers, the book will provide useful and verified information about those influential persons together with their views and their activities.
Information about editors:
Trinh Huu Long is co-founder and co-director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) based in Taipei, Taiwan, as well as editor of Luat Khoa Magazine, a Vietnamese publication covering Vietnam’s law and politics. He began his career in 2008 as a corporate legal counsel in Hanoi and became a journalist and democracy advocate in 2011. He has worked for various media and human rights organizations such as Tia Sáng magazine (2011-2012), Tuổi Trẻ newspaper (2012), and VOICE (2013-2016). He has a background in law and Asia-Pacific studies, specializing in Vietnam’s constitutional law, freedom of expression, internet freedom, and criminal justice, as well as Taiwan’s democratization. He has written and translated several books in politics and has been an author of the Vietnam Chapter of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net reports since 2021.
Nguyen Luong Hai Khoi received his PhD from Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan in 2014 and has been a research fellow at Hiroshima University (2015) and Johns Hopkins University (2017). He taught at Ho Chi Minh City University of Education for more than a decade until 2018, and is currently a research fellow at the US-Vietnam Research Center and the Managing Editor of the US Vietnam Review published online by the Center. His writings focus on Vietnamese politics, society and economy, Vietnamese republicanism, and the South China Sea disputes. His most recent publication is “Early Republican Concept of the Nation: Trần Trọng Kim and Việt Nam Sử Lược,” in Nu-Anh Tran and Tuong Vu, eds. Building a Republican Nation in Vietnam, 1920-1963 (Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and University of Hawaii Press, 2023), 43-60.
Tuong Vu is Professor and Department Head of Political Science, University of Oregon, where he has taught since 2008. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and the National University of Singapore, and taught at the Naval Postgraduate School. Vu is the founding director of the US-Vietnam Research Center based at the Global Studies Institute, University of Oregon. His research has focused on the comparative politics of state formation, development, and revolutions in East and Southeast Asia. He is one of a handful of political scientists in the world who study Vietnam, and his work has been translated into Chinese, French, and Vietnamese. He is the author and co-editor of seven books, two forthcoming volumes, and 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Vu serves on the editorial boards of several international journals and is frequently consulted by national and international media.
