Since 2022
 Associated Researcher at the Global South Studies Center. She is a Principal Investigator of the research unit “The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Global Contexts and Concepts of Labor Exploitation.”

Since 2019
Associate Professor, School of International Studies/Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University

2016-19
Acting Associate Professor, School of International Studies/Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University

2013-15
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of International Studies/Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University

2013
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (Jun-Aug)

2011-12
Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, Rhodes University

2010
PhD, State University of New York Binghamton, Sociology

2008-09
Research Associate, Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg

2008
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California Irvine

2005-07
Academic Visitor at Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)

2005
Academic Visitor at the University of South Africa Press (UNISA)

2004
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Political Science, State University of New York Purchase

2002, 2003
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Africana Studies, State University of New York Binghamton

2002
MA, State University of New York Binghamton, Sociology

1999-2007
Research Associate at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, State University of New York Binghamton

1999, 2001
Research Intern, The World Bank, East Asia Pacific region, Washington DC

1998
BA, University of California Santa Barbara, Black Studies and Political Science

Thematic

• Cultural political economy
• (Unfree) labor and racial capitalism
• Social identity formations
• Migration and diaspora
• Social history
• China-Africa

Regional

• South Africa
• China

Chapter in edited volumes

Huynh, T.T. and Y.J. Park. 2019. Reflections on the Role of Race in China-Africa Relations. In: C. Alden and D. Large (eds.). New Directions in Africa-China Studies. Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 158-172.

Huynh, T.T., Agartan, T. and W.Y. Choi. 2007. 1760–1848: The Transformation of the Capitalist World. In: W.G. Martin (ed.). Making Waves: Worldwide Social Movements, 1760-2005. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 10-49.

Peer reviewed journal articles

Huynh, T.T. Forthcoming. “Undetermined Identity: A Diaspora Scholar in China-Africa Studies.” In: Journal of African Cultural Studies.

Huynh, T.T. 2020. “Dear Friends”: From People’s Cultural Exchange to People’s Cultural Production. Special Issue Article: China’s Relations with the Global South. In: African and Asian Studies 19/1-2, 35-59.

Huynh, T.T. and D.S. Kahyana. 2020. China’s Relations with the Global South: Circulations of People, Things, Images, and Ideas. Special Issue Article: China’s Relations with the Global South. In: African and Asian Studies 19/1-2, 1-10.

Molebatsi, Natalia and T.T. Huynh. 2020. Our World Through Our Words: The People and Their Stories Through Our Ancestors’ Voices. Special Issue Article: China’s Relations with the Global South. In: African and Asian Studies 19/1-2, 81-98.

Huynh, T.T. 2018. China Town Malls in South Africa in the 21st Century: Ethnic Chinatowns or Chinese State Projects. In: Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 27/1, 28-54.

Huynh, T.T. and Y.J. Park. 2018. “Chineseness” Through Unexplored Lenses: Identity-Making in China-Africa Engagements in the 21st Century. In: Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 27/1, 3-8.

Huynh, T.T. 2016. A “Wild West” of Trade? African Women and Men and the Gendering of Globalisation from Below in Guangzhou. In: Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 23/5, 501-518.

Huynh, T.T. 2015. “It’s Not Copyrighted,” Looking West for Authenticity: Historical Chinatowns and China Town Malls in South Africa. In: China Media Research 11/1, 99-111.

Huynh, T.T. and Tan Z.L. (Translator). 2014. What is “Chineseness” in the Politico-Cultural Context of China-Africa Relations/中非政治文化交流语境中的中国性/华人性. In: Southeast Asian Studies/东南亚研究 1, 98-103.

Huynh, T.T. 2013. Black Marxism: An Incorporated Analytical Framework for Rethinking Chinese Labour in South African Historiography. In: African Identities 11/2, 185-199.

Huynh, T.T. 2012. We are not a Docile People: Chinese Resistance and Exclusion in the Re-imagining of Whiteness in South Africa, 1903-1910. In: Journal of Chinese Overseas 8/2, 137-168.

Huynh, T.T. and Y.J. Park. 2010. Introduction: Chinese in Africa. In: African and Asian Studies 9/3, 207-212.

Huynh, T.T., Park, Y.J. and A.Y. Chen. 2010. Faces of China: New Chinese Migrants in South Africa, 1980s to Present. In: African and Asian Studies 9/3, 286-306.

Huynh, T.T. 2008. Loathing and Love: Postcard Representations of Indentured Chinese Laborers in South Africa’s Reconstruction, 1904-10. In: Safundi 9/4, 395-425.

Huynh, T.T. 2008. From Demand for Asiatic Labor to Importation of Indentured Chinese Labor: Race Identity in the Recruitment of Unskilled Labor for South Africa’s Gold Mining Industry, 1903-1910. In: Journal of Chinese Overseas 4/1, 51-68.

The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Global Contexts and Concepts of Labor Exploitation (VolkswagenStiftung) (2020-23)

Project information: 

The starting point for this project is a very specific conundrum: Why have attempts at increasing equality often contributed to generating more durable inequalities? To shed some light on this question, this research focuses on concepts and actors and their roles in producing and reproducing social inequalities in the context of colonial and postcolonial labour systems and regimes of mobility in the "Global South". In this study, inequalities are understood as relational and historically embedded and as comprising several dimensions, including social, economic, and epistemic inequality. More specifically, the project team focuses on selected concepts that are locally grounded and describe forms of social inequalities linked to different types of labour exploitation, namely "native labour", "new slavery", "human trafficking", and "cheap/abundant labour". The team members investigate - both from a historical and contemporary perspective - how these concepts circulated on a global scale, and were negotiated, translated, and adapted by institutional and individual actors with the aim of challenging social inequalities, while eventually contributing to the production of those same, or new, inequalities. The project intends to reconcile debates on conceptual history, labour history, and inequality and combines perspectives from both South and North. Ultimately, it aims to interpret global labour regimes and to draw lessons from experiences for societies in both the "Global South" as well as the "Global North".

http://portal.volkswagenstiftung.de/search/projectDetails.do?siteLanguage=en&ref=96966