Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ is a Research Associate (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in the Global History section at the Free University of Berlin, where she also holds a DFG-funded project, “Global Cultures of Socialism After Empire: Connected Histories Between Poland and North Vietnam.” Her research focuses on the cultural and social history of state socialism in Poland and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, global socialism, histories of racism, migration and mobility, as well as mixed-race intimacies.

Her current academic book project, based on both Polish and Vietnamese sources, examines the entanglements of East European socialism and postcolonial reordering in former Indochina within the context of the global Cold War, spanning the period from the 1954 Geneva Accords to Vietnamese unification in 1976. The book approaches this history through the lens of global socialist cultures in its broadest sense—from the public sphere, exhibitions and unpublished documentary photography to scattered diasporic archives.

Linh’s research has been published or is forthcoming in journals including Cahiers du Monde Russe, East European Politics and Societies, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, and Slavic Review, as well as in numerous edited volumes. Beyond academic publishing, she occasionally contributes op-eds on contemporary political and social issues, addressing topics such as minority and migrant activism in Poland, the Hanau attack in Germany, and women’s protests. She is also engaged with and on behalf of the Vietnamese diasporas in Poland, Germany and Austria, participating in public events and contributing to exhibitions at institutions such as the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Warsaw, and Halle 14 in Leipzig.

Linh earned her PhD at the European University Institute in Florence in Italy and, before joining FU Berlin, was a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna. In 2023–2024, she was a German Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Her research has received support from numerous institutions, including the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Institute at Columbia University in New York City, and the German Historical Institute in Warsaw.

In the 2025/2026 Fall term, I will offer two MA courses and welcome students with interests in the history of state socialism, cultural history, and global connections:

Cultures of Socialism in Eastern Europe after 1945 (Global History, MA), 13325

1989: Transformations and Continuities in Central and Eastern Europe (History MA),13326

Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ’s research explores the cultural and social history of socialism and the history of everyday life, with a particular emphasis on the Polish People’s Republic, postcolonial transformations in North Vietnam, and global socialist entanglements. Her work also engages with the histories of minorities, mobility, migration, and racism.

The book excavates intertwined historical trajectories and personal encounters to reveal Poland’s role in shaping postcolonial state-building in North Vietnam. It also recovers the constrained yet meaningful agency of Vietnamese students and North Vietnamese bureaucrats who sought to build and sustain new connections with Eastern European socialist states. Through these efforts, they simultaneously attempted to make sense of, and participate in, a new global order in the making. By bringing to light the Vietnamese presence—both physical and mediated—in Poland, the book will examine the largely unexplored experiences of multi-ethnic coexistence within socialist societies and demonstrates how the heterogeneity of the global Cold War emerged through everyday practices of socialist cohabitation. These encounters and Vietnamese presence, in turn, laid the groundwork for Vietnamese diasporic life-worlds that took shape after 1989.

Journal Articles

“‘The Children Will Be Unhappy:’ Racialized Perceptions of Cultural Differences in Late Socialist Poland,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 50 no. 3 (2024): 240-265.

“Introduction: Writing Histories of Racism and Antiracism in Europe, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 50 no. 3 (2024): 217-239 (with Catherine Davies).

“Promises of Blackness in the State Socialist Public Sphere in Poland,” Slavic Review, accepted and forthcoming (with Margaret Ohia-Nowak).

“‘Me? I’m no revolution. I’m no heroine’. Reconfiguring the Dissident in Contemporary Polish Theater,” East European Politics and Societies, 38 (2024), 3, 865-886.

“Introduction: Racialization and the Politics of Visibility,” View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 39 (2024), special issue of an online journal (co-edited and written with Agata Pietrasik).

“Caring Community and Affective Pedagogy: Jacek Kuroń’s Political Milieu in 1970s Socialist Warsaw”, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 62 (2021), 1, 51-76.

“Precarity and Neoliberalism, Resistance and Solidarity: Work and the Future of the University”, in: Krisis. Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, 2 (2015), 7-14 (with J.-E. Hansson & O. Innset).

Contributions to Edited Volumes

Published:

“A World of Their Own: Vietnamese Students in Late Socialist Poland,” in Rethinking Socialist Space, ed. Marcus Colla & Paul Betts, Palgrave MacMillan-St Antony’s Series 2024, 185-215.

Forthcoming:

“To See Vietnam and the Vietnamese: Documentary Photography and Historical Entanglements between Poland and Vietnam,” in Decolonizing the Museum, eds. Erica Lehrer, Joanna Wawrzyniak & Łukasz Bukowiecki, De Gruyter 2026, forthcoming.

“Political Opposition in Socialist Poland,” in Handbook on the History of Poland, ed. Maciej Gorny, Katrin Steffen & Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk, Routledge 2027, forthcoming.

“Not Just Numbers: Mobility and The Making of the Early 1990s in Poland,” in The Routledge Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation, ed. Rosamund Johnston, Jannis Panagiotidis, Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ, et al., Routledge2026, forthcoming.

“To Care Beyond Kin: The Case of the Polish-Vietnamese Hospital in Vinh, 1960 to 1965,” in The Gift. Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture as Gift, ed. Łukasz Stanek, Jovis 2026, forthcoming.

The Routledge Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation, co-editor with Rosamund Johnston, Jannis Panagiotidis, et al., and contributor, Routledge 2026, forthcoming.