Professor Ly Tran

A guiding hand for international students

Maintaining and strengthening the exchange and mutual learning of knowledge, skills, culture and diplomacy between Australia and the rest of the Indo-Pacific region underpins the work of Professor Ly Tran.

An Australian Research Council Future Fellow within Deakin University’s Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Strategic Research Centre, Professor Tran has devoted her career to higher education, graduate employability, diversity and the teaching and learning of international students, with a focus on building connections between Australia and Vietnam through education.

'International education enriches Australia’s universities, culture, society and the economy. International students create long-lasting ties which enhance Australia’s multilateral relationships and international position,' she says.

'I have enjoyed and treasured the enriching interactions with, and the enormous opportunity to learn from, a diversity of research students, colleagues and international collaborators in my job.'

A purpose shaped by struggle

Born in the year the Vietnam War ended and her native country was reunified, Prof. Tran’s view of the world was shaped by growing up in Quang Tri, a small town near the 17th Parallel, which divided the nation during the conflict.

'Being educated in a post-war context where there was a constant struggle to navigate the tensions between colonial legacies and decolonisation as a result of the country’s long history of resistances to foreign incursions, Vietnamese values and trans-national flows of ideas, I became curious about the encounter of differences and the interaction of different values,' she says.

'This sparked my interest in international education research, which involves intercultural learning, cross-border mobilities, identity transformation, trans-national knowledge connection and multilateral relationship building.'

Prof. Tran received a Bachelor of Arts from Vietnam’s Hue University, a Master of Education from Monash University and a Doctor of Philosophy from University of Melbourne before becoming a lecturer at RMIT University (2008 to 2013). She has been a senior lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor for the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University for the past ten years and is also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow.

Highly respected and widely published

In 2019, Forbes Vietnam named Prof. Tran one of Vietnam’s 50 most influential women for her leading research into Vietnamese higher education reform and international student mobility. She has the highest number of publications in international journals of any Vietnamese woman researching the social sciences, and was the lead author on the first English-language book on Vietnamese higher education and the first edited book to address issues in internationalisation in Vietnamese higher education.

Her research has been featured in major media outlets such as the ABC, SBS, The Australian, and the Australian Financial Review. 'Our research into international students helped disrupt stereotypes about international students and enrich public understandings about issues facing international students and their contributions to the broader community,' she says.

One article she co-authored, focusing on international student graduates during the COVID-19 pandemic, was the most-read article in the Education section of The Conversation in 2020, reaching more than 210,000 readers.

Professor Tran is an often-called upon expert by media, speaking to student mobilities and the experiences of international students and graduates on temporary visas in Australia.

Prof. Tran’s recent research has included a focus on the New Colombo Plan, a program devised to promote student mobility and public diplomacy. The project includes a national survey of 1,300 Australian students and alumni studying in the Indo-Pacific under the New Colombo Plan. The survey found that the primary motivations of students who took part in the New Colombo Plan were to challenge themselves (96%), gain experience in the Indo-Pacific region and broaden their understanding about the region (96%), become familiar with another culture (96%), and travel to a new place (95%).

‘Our research found that the impact of short-term mobility on student learning outcomes and development was similar to that of long-term mobility,’ she says.

‘Interestingly, short-term mobility students were more satisfied with their learning abroad experience than long-term ones.’

A helping hand to build employment links

Prof. Tran also leads research to investigate the impacts of the post-study work rights policy in Australia. In 2022-2-23, there were 179,017 international graduates on the temporary graduate visa in Australia, almost triple the previous year (63,786).

'A lot of employers prefer those who are holding permanent residency or citizenship, so they automatically discriminate against those on a temporary visa,’ Professor Tran says.

‘Our study found that only 36% of international graduates who are current and past holders of the temporary graduate visa are in full-time employment in their field of study, so clearly a considerable proportion of them are still struggling to find employment.’

'We’re working towards fulfilling the ethical commitment of Australian universities, as well as ensuring the sustainable growth of international students and the long-term enrolment targets for Australian universities.'

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