Thy Phu

Biography

Thy Phu is a Distinguished Professor of Race, Diaspora and Visual Justice at the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media. After completing her PhD at the University of California Berkeley, and a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto, she joined Western University, where for more than a decade, she taught courses on visual studies, cultural theory, and Asian North American culture. Her research and public humanities practice examine the intersections between media studies, diaspora and migration, vision and justice. She is the author of two books, Picturing Model Citizens: Civility in Asian American Visual Culture and Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam. She is also coeditor of another three volumes, Feeling Photography, Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada, and Cold War Camera. In 2017, she was elected as member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists at the Royal Society of Canada. She is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal of Trans Asia Photography and is currently co-director of Refugee States, a community-led project that creates counter-archives of refugee and migrant digital storytelling, which is funded by a SSHRC Race, Gender and Diversity Initiative grant.

Education

Ph.D, University of California at Berkeley

Teaching Interests

Visual culture and communication; critical refugee studies; multiculturalism and diaspora 

Research Interests

War and visual culture; photography studies; Asian North American studies; critical refugee studies; diaspora studies

Awards and Grants

SSHRC Insight Grant, "Visual Kinship: : Race and the Transnational Practices of Family Photography" (2020-2025)
SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, “The Family Camera Network.” (2016-2019)
SSHRC Connection Grant, "Cold War Camera." (2014-2016)

Publications

Exhibitions

Projects

Trans Asia Photography
Co-editor with Deepali Dewan and Yi Gu
https://transasiaphotography.org