Yale PhD Researcher Haydon Cherry in Vietnam

New Zealand academic Haydon Cherry currently spends most of his days at Ho Chi Minh City’s National Archive Centre II reading documents on the lives of the urban poor. This research in Vietnam is part of Haydon’s doctoral fellowship at Yale University, (2004-2010). His PhD dissertation, which focuses on the French colonial period of 1858 to 1954, is concerned with the ways in which poor Vietnamese people responded to the changing economic and political environment in which they lived.

Haydon’s interest in the history of Southeast Asia was initially ignited during his undergraduate education at the National University of Singapore (1998-2002), which was funded by an Asia 2000 Singapore Scholarship. He says that this interest arose as, “a natural consequence of living in the region and a number of classes I took with gifted teachers in anthropology and history.”

Haydon has a highly impressive academic record. During his fellowship at Yale he has been awarded two Masters degrees. He has also received additional funding to spend the past year in France and from the Social Science Research Council to spend the current year in Vietnam.  Moreover, he has recently been awarded a Mrs Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship, Yale's most prestigious award for Humanities PhD students, to write up his dissertation.

With regard to Asia-New Zealand relations, Haydon is of the opinion that New Zealand universities should work harder to encourage more scholarship in the area of Asian cultures, languages and histories, particularly, of South East Asia.

In the future Haydon hopes to gain an academic appointment teaching and researching South East Asian history at a university in the United States or elsewhere.