Mrs Thu Trang Tran is our Senior Teaching Fellow in Vietnamese – here she talks about her experiences teaching Vietnamese at SOAS Coming to London 7 years ago, I never imagined that I would become a language teacher here, yet this job has given me 6 amazing years as member of the Department of South East Asia at, a unique and beautifully integrated environment. Not only am I inspired by
With a Vietnamese mother and a Jewish father, I was always intrigued by different cultures and languages – in being different in general. Initially accepted to study French and Hispanic studies at Bath University, it all changed when I accompanied a friend to a talk at SOAS. Despite never having heard of SOAS, from the moment I stepped into the JCR and realised that it was possible to study Vietnam
I originally applied to SOAS for Politics and International Relations, with the intention of perhaps taking a language as part of the Language Entitlement Programme. I had chosen SOAS because of its unique non-Eurocentric perspective among UK universities on global affairs. Other universities I had submitted applications to for the same course had almost identical syllabuses to each other so picking SOAS was an obvious choice with its specialised regional modules