Dr. Hieu Phung (PhD, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) is a Sinologist turned environmental historian specializing in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Her research examines how local culture and statecraft shaped preindustrial environments, with a focus on water, rivers, and climate change. Drawing on Vietnamese Han-Nom sources, including geographical texts and traditional maps, she studies Vietnamese history from both a longue durée perspective and an interdisciplinary approach. She has published on the history of the Red River and premodern meteorology.
Her forthcoming book, Vietnam in the Little Ice Age: Environmental Governance and Dai Viet’s Ascent (under contract with Cambridge University Press), develops an innovative framework for studying fragmented dynastic chronicles alongside paleoclimate reconstructions and argues that recurred droughts and weather extremes were systematically transformed through state intervention because responses to disasters were regarded as a domain of governance and coincided with political consolidation.
Professor Phung teaches courses on Asian environmental issues, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and Global Asia, bridging the humanities and environmental sciences.
Selected Publications
- “River, Climate, and Water Technologies in Early Southeast Asia,” New Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, volume 1,edited by Miriam T. Stark (forthcoming, 2026/7).
- “Before the River Network: The Visualization of the Red River System in Vietnam, 1300-1700,” Water and Culture in Eurasian History, volume 2, edited by Nicholas Breyfogle and Philip Brown, University of Pittsburgh Press (under contract, 2026).
- “Meteorology in Vietnam, Pre 1800,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, 20 June 2022
- “Case Study: The Red River Dikes in Northern Vietnam.” The Cultural Heritages of Water in the Tropical and Sub-tropical Eastern and Southern Eastern Asia. A Thematic Study by ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advisory body to UNESCO for World Heritage), edited by Michel Cotte, Nupur Prothi, and Jean-François Toulze, 2022.
- "Naming the Red River—Becoming a Vietnamese River." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 51, no. 4 (2020): 518-537.