Van Minh NGUYEN

Adresse visiteur Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains Avenue Jeanne, 44 Bâtiment S Bureau S12.119 1050 Bruxelles Belgique Adresse courrier Université libre de Bruxelles Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 50 - CP 124 1050 Bruxelles Belgique Van.Minh.Nguyen@ulb.be

Bio

Van Minh Nguyen is a doctoral candidate and FNRS research fellow at the Université Libre the Bruxelles (LAMC; EASt), where he is part of the ARC project ‘GENEsYs – East Asian Youth: Identities and Practices in Public Space’. He earned a BA in Language, culture and society of Japan, and a MA in Cultural anthropology, ethnology and ethnolinguistics, both at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His MA thesis analyzed inter-generational cultural transmission and the memory of the Vietnam War within the Vietnamese community of Houston, Texas. His PhD project focuses on mobility in Ho Chi Minh City. In particular, it considers how, in a context of urban sprawl and population outburst where privacy has become a consumer good accessible only to the middle-class, the motorbike acts as an agent of democratization, allowing riders to negotiate their presence in the city through spatial expertise, bodily practices, and social relations, as well as to create alternative microgeographies in the social, political and economic landscapes of the city.

Présentation des recherches

Title of the thesis: Mapping the Invisible: Geographies of Consumption, Mobility and Intimacy among Youth in Ho Chi Minh City

Keywords: urban anthropology – mobility – intimacy – consumption – youth – motorbike – public space – Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City