Overview of the Organization of Vietnamese Studies in Those Institutions Where Young Researchers Prepare Their Dissertations and These Articles

Antoine Lê is conducting his PhD at the INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales). The National University of Languages and Oriental Civilizations is a public university that was founded in 1795. Dr. Jean-Philippe Eglinger is teaching at INALCO, a university where he also defended his PhD. Ever since, it has been amongst the main academic institutions in France to teach dozens of different languages and cultural studies classes. Amongst its 14 research teams, the INALCO has two units that include Vietnamese studies in their capacities – the French Research Institute on East Asia (IFRAE) and the Center for South East Asian Studies (CASE), which is a joint EHESS-CNRS-INALCO research unit. For a scholar in Vietnamese history, being affiliated with these major academic institutions offers priceless opportunities to access important archive centers in France. The first one is the French Diplomatic Archives Center at La Courneuve that curates all the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, while the Diplomatic Archives Center in Nantes holds the fonds from the various French diplomatic missions and embassies around the world. Since 2002, facilitating greatly the researcher’s work, the Center at La Courneuve has recategorized thousands of unique documents from the French diplomatic and intelligence services about all aspects of the Vietnam War under a single archives’ series (148QO Vietnam-Conflit). Another major place of interest for Vietnam scholars is the archive at the Institut d’Asie Orientale (IAO) in Lyon. Consisting of thousands of unique documents originating from scholars Georges Boudarel and Daniel Hemery’s private archives, it has been continuously augmented by Francois Guillemot through the acquisition of hundreds of Vietnamese language publications, that are difficult or near-impossible to find elsewhere.