ABOUT ME

Welcome! Xin chào! 欢迎！ようこそ！

I am Duong Thi Thuy Pham, a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and a 2025-2026 Dissertation Fellow at UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). My research interests revolve around the puzzle of authoritarian survival and autocratization in the 21st century. I focus primarily on the politics of "meaning-making", especially how autocratic regimes deploy propaganda and information control tactics to win the hearts and minds of people, both at home and abroad. 

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My dissertation tackles an understudied angle of modern authoritarianism: autocrats' redefinition of "democracy" in ways that challenge the Western liberal model. Why do autocrats redefine democracy rather than completely rejecting it or overselling their democratic quality? How do they redefine democracy? Does redefining democracy helps autocrats stabilize their rule? To answer these questions, I zoom into Vietnam as the primary case, drawing on a diverse set of methods, including qualitative and computer-assisted text analysis of archival documents, original survey experiments, ethnographic observation, as well as semi-structured interviews. A compact version of my argument is available in this piece published by UC IGCC.

My regional expertise spans Southeast and Northeast Asia, with a substantive focus on Vietnam and China. I am also pursuing research on the international relations of the Asia-Pacific, ASEAN, LGBT politics in Vietnam, and applications of AI to qualitative research methods.

Originally from Da Lat, Vietnam, I received a B.A. in International Relations and Peace Studies from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan). I later earned an M.A. in Law (Politics and International Relations) from Peking University as a Yenching Scholar at the Yenching Academy of Peking University (People's Republic of China) and simultaneously, a Baixian Scholar affiliated with the Baixian Asia Institute (Hong Kong). I am grateful for and take great pride in an educational journey that has spanned diverse sociocultural and political contexts. This journey has given me the courage and capacity to continually challenge the East-West dichotomy and the assumptions it carries - those that have shaped many biases in our understanding of the modern world. I carry this philosophy with me as I curate an own academic identity that, I hope, crosses conventional scholarly boundaries and stays open to novel ways of knowledge production.
 

I believe that academics should carry a responsibility to engage with the societies their work seeks to understand. I am therefore committed to maintaining an active practice of public-facing scholarship, translating academic insights into accessible commentary and analysis for broader audiences. As part of this commitment, I have contributed to outlets including The Diplomat and East Asia Forum, and I will continue to engage in public conversations through my writing.