Natalie Porter

Natalie Porter spent a year and a half in Vietnam teaching English and studying Vietnamese before beginning a PhD program in cultural anthropology. While in Vietnam, Natalie was struck by the way that discourses of development saturated the minutiae of everyday life. She became interested in how global processes of economic development collide with local cultural practices. Natalie will explore how the benefits and detriments of economic development are inscribed on the increasingly-contested female forms. Her project will ethnographically examine the gendered aspects of economic development, focusing on women as important loci for the reconceptualization of the Vietnamese nation-state as the country opens its borders to global socioeconomic forces. Natalie’s studies have been supported by an Advanced Opportunity Fellowship and FLAS. This summer, she will contact southern Vietnamese scholars, government officials, and mass media producers. She will also begin interviews with businesswomen and female rural-urban migrant workers in preparation for her dissertation research on the role of women in economic development.

Check out how Natalie’s research experience in Vietnam went here.