Ngo Thi Phuong Thien was born in Paris where her parents, initially, were graduate students. For ten years her mother, Mme Ngo Ba Thanh, travelled across Europe, the United States and Russia learning and lecturing on Comparative Law, the family following. They returned to South Vietnam in the early ’60s and soon after, lawyer Ngo Ba Thanh became involved in the peace movement which resulted in her being in prison and under house arrest for much of the decade leading up to unification of the country – with concomitant disruption for the family.
Thien, a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, graduated from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, where she commenced her career with the department of English Literature & Linguistics. She has held a variety of posts during her 30 years there, including Vice and Acting Dean of the Department of British Literature & Linguistics (1988-92) and has published textbooks on English and American Cultural Studies. Thien has a Post graduate diploma from Canberra University (Australia) and a Master’s degree from Warwick University (UK).
Thien was a participant in the first joint American Studies Conference since 1975 organized by leading American and Vietnamese scholars in Hanoi in 1999 and the youngest education delegate at the Vietnam Conferences in Washington D.C. in 1994. Since then, she has presented countless papers at seminars and conferences in Vietnam and abroad (including Korea, Japan, US, Thailand, Malaysia), on issues related to education, language teaching, Vietnam studies, Gender issues and world cultural studies. Students under her direction won a national prize from the Ministry of Education and Training in 2004. She was also awarded fifteen ‘Excellent Lecturer’ certificates and a medal for 25 years of outstanding contribution to education.