Mytoan Nguyen-Akbar is a sociologist with interests in international migration, racial and ethnic studies, global and transnational sociology, ethnography, and service learning methods.  Her dissertation, “Ambivalent Diasporics: High-Skilled ‘Return’ Migration and Social Change in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam”  follows the family, friendship, and work lives of high-skilled ‘return’ migrants in long-term jobs in Vietnam, their parents’ ancestral homeland, and how the migrants’ presence in global firms and international nongovernmental organizations, media/arts and entertainment industries in Vietnam reveals their ambivalent sense of belonging as neither locals or foreigners.  Her participant observation fieldwork and semi-structured interviews took place in 2004, 2008, and 2010 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Many aspects of her social biography involve international and regional migration.  Her BA degree is from UC Berkeley, and her MA is from the University of Melbourne, Australia, where I was a Fulbright Fellow.

In 2014, she moved to Seattle, Washington, and accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA.