Dr. Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ
Researcher (on leave)

Dr. Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ
Researcher (on leave)

During the academic year 2023/24, Dr. Nguyễn Vũ is on leave at Harvard University

Research Interests:

  • History of Poland
  • Eastern Europe
  • History of Vietnam
  • History of Migration between the Second and the Third World
  • Global History of Socialist Collaboration
  • Oral History
  • Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies

Current Research Projects:

Practices of Togetherness: Jacek Kuroń, Communities of Care and Political Opposition in Late Socialist Poland (1955-1982).   

Strange but Familiar: The Global Microhistory of Contacts between Poland and Vietnam (1955-1989). 

My first book manuscript in progress (based on my dissertation written at the European University Institute in Florence) is provisionally entitled Practices of Togetherness: Jacek Kuroń, Communities of Care and Political Opposition in Late Socialist Poland (1955-1982).

Practices of Togetherness zooms in on the political milieu around one of the key political activists Jacek Kuroń in order to argue that the bonds of friendship and practices of care play an essential role in creating enabling conditions behind the emergence and sustainability of political mobilization in socialist Poland. Tracing the prehistory of this specific milieu and its communal practices and political commitments back to Kuroń’s socialist pedagogy, and the Walterowcy scout troops of the 1950s, I detail how the everyday practices of political activists that might otherwise appear as mere personal anecdote or historical trivia are intrinsically bound up with the dissident moment and the broader political culture of dissent—from the Open Letter to the Party and ‘Polish 1968,’ via the founding of KOR and the underground press of the 1970s, to Solidarność, and the Martial Law.

Simultaneously, I'm developing my postdoctoral project that is entitled Strange but Familiar: The Global Microhistory of Contacts between Poland and Vietnam (1955-1989). Exploring various contacts and modes of interaction between the 'Second' and the 'Third' World, Strange but Familiar aims to recast the story of the Global Cold War from the pivot point of two medium-sized states, namely Poland and Vietnam. Despite its long-lasting and unintended outcomes, little is known of the history of contacts between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Polish People's Republic after 1955. By examining the experiences of Vietnamese students in Poland my goal is to examine the transnational support provided by Poland to Vietnam amid decolonization (and subsequently as a postcolonial state) through the prism of state-sponsored scholarship programs, socialist pedagogy and cultural exchanges.

Combining micro-historical approaches with transnational and global perspectives, Strange but Familiar will bring into light the history of transnational socialism, mobility and labor migration by comparing the official discourse of socialist transnational friendship with the day-to-day experience of migrants who themselves encapsulated and challenged those very ideas of global socialist collaboration.

Publications:

Affective Pedagogy and Caring Community: Jacek Kuroń’s Political Milieu in 1970s Socialist Warsaw, accepted, Cahiers du Monde Russe. 

“Tworzenie światów. Architektura i globalna zimna wojna: recenzja książki Łukasza Stanka,” in SZUM, 31 (2020), pp. 80-100.

"Listening to Solidarity. A Review of Jack M. Bloom: Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution", in: History Workshop Journal, 81 (2016), 1, pp. 293-300.

Review of Katherine Lebow, Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949-56 and Kinga Pozniak, Nowa Huta: Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town, in European History Quarterly, 46 (2016), 2, pp. 367-370.

"Global Circuits of Expertise and the Making of the Post-1945 World," Conference Report, H-Net Reviews / H-Soz-Kult, July 2016.

Review of Andrzej Brzeziecki, Tadeusz Mazowiecki: biografia naszego premiera, and Roman Graczyk, Od uwikłania do autentyczności. Biografia polityczna Tadeusza Mazowieckiego, in: Acta Poloniae Historica, 112 (2015), pp. 372-383.

"Precarity and Neoliberalism, Resistance and Solidarity: Work and the Future of the University", in: Krisis. Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, 2 (2015), pp. 7-14 (with John-Erik Hansson and Ola Innset).

"Collecting Xenophobia. Ein Projekt zur Archivierung der 'Gelben Gefahr'" (on John Kuo-Wei Tchen/Dylan Yeats (eds.): Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear), in: Cargo. Film, Medien, Kultur, 23/2014 (with Robin Celikates).