Liam C. KELLEY

Associate Professor
PhD (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

About

Liam C. Kelley is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies in The Institute of Asian Studies.

His background is in premodern Vietnamese history, but he is particularly interested in how the premodern Vietnamese past has been reinterpreted and re-purposed since the early twentieth century.

Beyond Vietnam, Professor Kelley has taught numerous courses on modern Southeast Asian history and is interested in re-conceptualizing the narrative of modern Southeast Asian history.

Professor Kelley is also very interested in the ways in which the Digital Revolution is transforming how scholars can produce and disseminate their ideas and has been at the forefront of the effort to employ new digital media for academic purposes.

Dr. Kelley is Founding and Series Co-Editor of the book series Global Vietnam (Springer) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies (Brill).

Finally, together with Professor Phan Le Ha in the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE), Professor Kelley organizes an annual conference called Engaging With Vietnam: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue.

Research Interests

     • Vietnamese history
     • Modern Southeast Asian history
     • Premodern Southeast Asian history
     • Digital Humanities
     • The Intersection of New Media and Academic Scholarship

Select Publications

Journal Articles

Liam C. Kelley, “Rescuing History from Srivijaya: The Fall of Angkor in the Ming Shilu (Part 1),” China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies Vol. 4, No. 1 (2022): 38-91.

Liam C. Kelley, “The Decline of Asian Studies in the West and the Rise of Knowledge Production in Asia: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Mobility, Knowledge Production and Academic Discourses,” Research in Comparative and International Education (RCIE), Vol.15, No. 3 (2020):273-290.

Liam C. Kelley, “Taxation and Military Conscription in Early Modern Vietnam: Nguyễn Đàng Trong in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies Vol. 15, No. 2 (2020): 1-39.

Liam C. Kelley, “The Centrality of ‘Fringe History’: Diaspora, the Internet and a New Version of Vietnamese Prehistory,” International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies Vol. 16, No. 1 (2020): 71–104.

Phan Lê Hà, Liam C. Kelley, and Jamie Gillen, “Introduction: The Collaboration Project between Engaging With Vietnam and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies Vol. 15, No. 1 (2020): 1-5.

Liam C. Kelley, “From a Reliant Land to a Kingdom in Asia: Premodern Geographic Knowledge and the Emergence of the Geo-Body in Late Imperial Vietnam,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 5.2 (2016): 460-496.

Liam C. Kelley, “Moral Exemplar, Our General, Potent Deity, Confucian Moralizer and National Hero: The Transformations of Trần Hưng Đạo,” Modern Asian Studies 49.6 (2015): 1963-1993.

Liam C. Kelley, “Tai Words and the Place of the Tai in the Vietnamese Past,” Journal of the Siam Society 101 (2013): 55-84.

Liam C. Kelley, “The Biography of the Hồng Bàng Clan as a Medieval Vietnamese Invented Tradition,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 7.2 (2012): 87-130.

Book Chapters

Liam C. Kelley, “Betwixt and Between Generational, Areal and Digital Divides: Studying Vietnam and Southeast Asia as a Generation X Sinologist in the Age of Globalization and the Digital Revolution,” in Fieldwork and the Self: Changing Research Styles in Southeast Asia, edited by Jérémy Jammes and Victor T. King (Singapore: Springer-IAS “Asia in Transition” Series, 2021), 353-380.

Dinh Hong Hai and Liam C. Kelley, “Competing Imagined Ancestries: The Lạc Việt, the Vietnamese, and the Zhuang,” in Vietnam at the Vanguard: New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community, edited by Jamie Gillen, Liam C. Kelley, and Phan Le Ha (Singapore: Springer-IAS Asia in Transition Series, forthcoming 2021), 89-107.

Liam C. Kelley, Jamie Gillen, and Phan Le Ha, “Introduction,” in Vietnam at the Vanguard: New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community, edited by Jamie Gillen, Liam C. Kelley, and Phan Le Ha (Singapore: Springer-IAS “Asia in Transition” Series, 2021), 1-14.

Liam C. Kelley, “Connecting to Power: Imagined Genealogies in Southern China and Mainland Southeast Asia,” in The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History: Circulation, Movement, Encounters, edited by May Hawas (London: Routledge, 2018), 289-297.

Liam C. Kelley, “Convergence and Conflict: Dai Viet and the Sinic Order,” in Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan, edited by Timothy Brook, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Johanna “Miek” Boltjes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Liam C. Kelley, “Constructing Local Narratives: Spirits: Dreams, and Prophecies in the Medieval Red River Delta,” in China’s Encounters on the South and Southwest: Forging the Fiery Frontier, James Anderson and John K. Whitmore, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 78-105.

Liam C. Kelley, “Inventing Traditions in Fifteenth-Century Vietnam,” in Imperial China and Its Southern Neighbours, edited by Victor Mair and Liam C. Kelley (Singapore: ISEAS, 2015), 161-193.

Edited Books and Special Issues

Jamie Gillen, Liam C. Kelley, and Phan Le Ha, eds., Vietnam at the Vanguard: New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community, edited by (Singapore: Springer-IAS Asia in Transition Series, forthcoming 2021).

Phan Lê Hà, Liam C. Kelley and Jamie Gillen, eds., “Special Issue: The Collaboration Project between Engaging With Vietnam and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies Vol. 15, No. 1 (2020).

John D. Phan and Liam C. Kelley, eds., “Buddhist Literacy in Early Modern Vietnamese Print Culture,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies Vol. 13, No. 3 (2018).

Victor Mair and Liam C. Kelley, eds., Imperial China and Its Southern Neighbours (Singapore: ISEAS, 2015).

News

New Chapter on Tianxia in Comparative Perspective

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam has recently published a chapter entitled “Tianxia as Anticosmopolitan and Protoracial: A Case Study of Late Imperial Vietnam” in a book entitled Tianxia in Comparative Perspectives: Alternative Models for a Possible Planetary Order that was edited by Roger T. Ames, […]

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Articles on Globalization, Vietnam, and ASEAN

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has recently co-edited a special section of four articles for the journal Suvannabhumi: Multi-disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies on “Globalization, Vietnam and ASEAN.” The four articles were first presented at the 12th Engaging With Vietnam conference, […]

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New Article on Sinology in Vietnam

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has recently published an article on “Sinology in Vietnam” in the Journal of Chinese History. Sinology is the study of “China,” and although the Vietnamese educated elite read and wrote classical Chinese for centuries, this paper argues […]

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Working Paper on the Chinese Sources on Early Southeast Asian History

The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam is pleased to announce the publication of IAS Working Paper No 73: Revisiting the Chinese Sources on Early Southeast Asian History by Liam C. Kelley. Please see below for details. Download the Working Paper Abstract: Chinese sources have played a very important role in the writing […]

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Seminar on Southeast Asian History

The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) recently held a seminar on “Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian History: The Under-recognized Role of the Malay Peninsula, 600-1400” by Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley. For more information, please see the flyer below.

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New IAS/Springer “Asia in Transition” Volume on Vietnam

The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) is pleased to announce the publication of the latest volume in the IAS/Springer “Asia in Transition” Series: Vietnam at the Vanguard: New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community edited by Jamie Gillen, Liam C. Kelley, and Phan Le Ha. This transdisciplinary edited book […]

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Liam C. Kelley on Vietnamese History & Area/Asian Studies

The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) is pleased to share a video interview with Dr. Liam C. Kelley of IAS on Vietnamese History & Area/Asian Studies. For more information about Dr. Kelley, please visit his IAS staff page:https://ias.ubd.edu.bn/liam-kelley/ Articles mentioned in the video: Liam C. Kelley, “The Decline of Asian Studies in […]

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Webinar on Vietnamese and International Scholarship

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) presented a webinar on 20 September 2020 on “Việt Origins in Vietnamese and International Scholarship: Unequal Knowledge in the Global Age” as part of “The Vietnam Studies Research Snapshot (VSRS) Webinar Series.” The VSRS Webinar Series seeks […]

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Kelley Appointed Co-Editor of New Journal

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley has been appointed co-editor of China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies (CAHS). Founded by Professor Han Xiaorong of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, CAHS is a peer-reviewed English-language forum for historical research on relations between China and other regions of Asia during both the pre-modern and modern periods. […]

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New Article on Vietnamese History

In a new article on Vietnamese history, Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley reinterprets what we know about the historical development of the southern half of Vietnam. The southern half of Vietnam has long been characterized by historians as historically less-centralized, less-Confucian, and less-bureaucratic than the Vietnamese heartland in the Red River delta. However, through a […]

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Kelley Co-Edits Journal Issue on Vietnam

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies. Entitled “The Collaboration Project between Engaging With Vietnam and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies,” this special issue contains three papers from an annual multi-disciplinary conference on Vietnam called Engaging […]

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Kelley on Vietnamese “Fringe History”

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam has just published an article on “The Centrality of ‘Fringe History’: Diaspora, The Internet and a New Version of Vietnamese Prehistory” in the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies. The abstract of the article is as follows: Until recently, virtually […]

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Seminar on Vietnam as a “Royal Nation”

Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley will give a talk for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) Seminar Series on “The Forgotten Role of the ‘Royal Nation’ of Vietnam.” For more information, please see the flyer below.

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IAS Working Paper on Early British North Borneo

The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam is pleased to announce the publication of IAS Working Paper No. 45: Stranger Kings and Strangers in an Asiatic Country: The Ambiguity of Human Relations in Early British North Borneo by Liam C. Kelley. Please see below for details. Abstract: This paper seeks to understand how […]

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