My present work focuses mainly on the social history of wartime Viet Nam and the human dimension, in particular the voices and experiences of ordinary people subsequent to the founding of the Republic of Viet Nam in 1955.
My book manuscript, Eve of Destruction: A Social History of Viet Nam’s Royal City, 1957-1967, relies on written and oral historical sources and extensive field research to illuminate through grassroots history how war transformed social life in the imperial city of Huế in central Viet Nam, critically so from the establishment of the University of Huế in 1957 to the start of the Tết Offensive in late January 1968.
Drawing on a Conference I hosted at Haverford College in 2019, I am at work also on Voices from the Everyday South: Civilian Lives During the Viet Nam War, an edited volume, which presents a wide range of personal narratives by ordinary Vietnamese from diverse social communities and walks of life and various regions, eyewitness accounts which reflect social and cultural life in the wartime south as directly experienced.