Assistant Professor at UCLA in the Department of Classics
Invited professor 2025-2026 from November 6 to December 7 2025
Inviting professor: Anne-Sophie Noël
Biography
Kelly Nguyen has been an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 2023. She is part of the interdisciplinary archaeology program and the faculty of the Mellon Data/Social Justice Initiative. From 2021 to 2023, she was an IDEAL Fellow at Stanford, following a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Berkeley (2021-2022). She holds a PhD in Ancient History (Brown University, 2021) and a BA in Archaeology and Classics (Stanford, 2012). Her research has been supported by several prestigious fellowships, including those from Stanford, Berkeley, and Brown. She received numerous grants at UCLA in 2024, totaling nearly $50,000 for projects in the humanities, data, and social justice. Her awards include the John J. Winkler Memorial Prize and several awards from the Women’s Classical Caucus. Her career illustrates recognized expertise in classical studies, archaeology, and social justice in American academia.
Collaboration with HiSoMa
The invitation to Kelly Nguyen, assistant professor in the Department of Classics at UCLA (California), is part of the "Classical Antiquity and Postcolonialism" program, which falls under the theme "Reception of Past Cultures" in axis B of the HiSoMA laboratory ("Ancient Cultures and Temporalities: Performance, Memory, Reception"). Since 2021, this program has been coordinated by Mathilde Cazeaux ( Associate Professor of Latin, ENS de Lyon) and Anne-Sophie Noël ( Associate Professor of Greek, ENS de Lyon), in collaboration with Cléo Carastro (Chair of Ancient Religious Anthropology, EHESS). This program aims to raise awareness of the scientific debates surrounding postcolonial theories and to engage in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary reflection (literature, history, archaeology, art history, performing arts, anthropology, sociology).
Beyond the international recognition brought about by the collaboration between ENS de Lyon and UCLA, Kelly Nguyen’s research will expose the scientific community and the student community (in the broadest sense) to very different and original methodologies, consciously situated within the context of her experience as an American-Vietnamese female researcher.
Kelly Nguyen’s research and teaching draw on comparative classical studies to explore the history of empires, forced displacement, race, and ethnicity in a global context. Her publications focus in particular on ethnic identity in the Roman world and on classical reception through the prism of postcolonial theory, queer criticism, critical race theory, and critical refugee studies. The monograph she will present as a visiting professor deals with a field that is still unexplored, on which no publications exist in French and very few in English.
Her visit to ENS de Lyon therefore represents a unique opportunity to explore research that considerably broadens the field of classical studies beyond its usual boundaries. The aim of this meeting is to encourage researchers, students, and PhD candidates to reflect on the field of studies on the reception of Antiquity and its connection with work on ancient sources. Kelly Nguyen’s visit will also provide an opportunity for collective reflection, beyond the field of classical literature, on postcolonial and decolonial theoretical corpuses (for example, at the heart of Vanessa Guignery’s work in English studies).
The scientific benefits will therefore extend beyond the scope of the HiSoMA laboratory alone. The invitation to Kelly Nguyen will also formalize a collaboration with the IAO, in particular with François Guillemot, historian of Vietnam, Zhang Rui, assistant professor of Chinese at ENS de Lyon, specialist in classical Chinese poetry, and Alexis Chen, PhD candidate at ENS de Lyon working on Chinese antiquity.
Conferences
An interdisciplinary conference-debate entitled "The Concept of Classics in the West and East," co-hosted by the HiSoMA and IAO research units, will take place on Wednesday, November 19, or Thursday, November 20, 2025.
The discussion will focus on the notion of "classical" and "canon" in the West and East from a comparative perspective. What traditions can be mobilized to define the concept of ’classical’ in China, Vietnam, or Japan? How are so-called "classical" traditions constituted in relation to transmission, teaching, but also the political choices made at a given time? What cultural and symbolic connotations are associated with "classical"- How has it been exploited for political purposes? Would a dynamic and comparative approach make it possible to decolonize the very idea of "classical"- This interdisciplinary exchange will bring together Kelly Nguyen, Zhang Rui, Alexis Chen, and Mickaël Lucken, a specialist in Japan, around a book on Greek Japan ( Le Japon grec , 2019).
Major publications
- Forthcoming "The Gauls in Ancient Rome and Colonial Vietnam: Race, Empire and Classical Inheritance," TAPA 155. (April 2025)
- Forthcoming "Translation of and Essay Response to Nguyen Manh Tuong’s ’Uprooting’’ and ’Images of Life’(Sourires et Larmes d’une Jeunesse, 1937), in Sarah Derbew, Daniel Orrells, Phiroze Vasunia (eds.), Classics and Race: A Historical Reader, UCL Press. (April 2025)
- 2023 "Queering Feminine Movement: Sappho, Ho Xuân Huong and Vi Khi Nao," in Kirk Ormand, Ella Haselswerdt, and Sara Lindheim (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Queer Theory, Routledge, pp. 303-315.
- 2022 "What’s in a Natio: Rethinking Ethnic Identity in the Roman World," in Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, José Brand.o, Cláudia Teixeira & Ália Rodrigues (eds.), Roman Identity: between Ideal and Performance, Brepols, pp. 371-393.
- 2021 "Queering Telemachus: Ocean Vuong, Postmemories and the Vietnam War," International Journal of the Classical Tradition 29: 430-448.
- 2020 "Pham Duy Khiêm, Classical Reception, and Colonial Subversion in early 20th century Vietnam and France," Classical Receptions Journal 12.3: 340-356.
