Introduction to the Faculty of History

Faculty of History is one of the two first faculties of USSH. In 1945, when the Hanoi University of Arts was founded, FOH was one of the two faculties of the University. In 1956, the University of Hanoi was established with two departments, namely Department of Sciences and Department of Letters. The Department of Letters was headed by Prof. Tran Duc Thao. Within 1956, the Department of Letters was separated into the Faculty of Literature and Faculty of History. Since then, Faculty of History has been always the leading institution in education, research, and application of historical knowledge in Vietnam.

Over the 63 years of establishment and development, Faculty of History has been the workplace of 212 staffs and have attained significant achievements in education and research in history.

- Created a prestigious School of USSH Historiography which had a strong influence both in Vietnam and abroad.

- Trained 60 cohorts with a total of over 100,000 undergraduates, postgraduates and PhDs in History.

- Published over 5,000 research works, in which 10% are books and textbooks and almost 5% are international publications.

- Chaired a larger number of national projects on Vietnamese history.

- Being granted State Honorable Titles Labor Order of the Reform period (for Faculty of History, 2000) and Hero of Labor (for Professor Tran Van Giau, 2003)

- Being granted the Firstclass Labor Order, the Secondclass Labor Order and the Thirdclass Labor Order for Faculty of History and several staff members of Faculty of History; six Ho Chi Minh Awards (Prof. Tran Van Giau, Prof. Tran Duc Thao, Prof. Dao Duy Anh, Prof. Ha Van Tan, Prof. Tran Quoc Vuong, Prof. Phan Huy Le); four State Awards (Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thua Hy, Prof. Phan Huy Le, Prof. Phan Dai Doan, Prof. Phan Huu Dat).

- Received international awards: Prof. Phan Huy Le was awarded accolades including the Fukuoka Prize in 1996, the French Order of Academic Palms in 2002, the honor as foreign correspondent member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2011, Docteur Honoris Causa awarded by École francaise d’Extrême-Orient (France, 2016); Prof. Tran Quoc Vuong was awarded the Rockfeller Fellow Award (USA, 1990); The man of the year 2000 (ABC, USA).

- The annual average number of students is 300 graduates, 30-50 postgraduates and 50-60 PhD candidates.

Mission and vision:

            As a member of a research-oriented university, Faculty of History has had a development plan with goals, directions, the development scale, vision, priorities and so forth, which clearly demonstrate its mission and vision to the year of 2035 as follows:

   Mission: Continuing to become a prestigious institution for training high quality human resources in the field of history, conducting research and disseminating historical knowledge to serve the course of national construction and defense.

Vision: Enhancing the quality of research products for the cause of training, meeting the society’s needs and gradually integrating into the world level in science and education

Philosophy of education: “Teaching benefits students as well as teachers” has been chosen as the educational philosophy of Faculty of History in order to maintain and develop Faculty of History’s position as leading institution in education, research, and application of historical knowledge in Vietnam. This philosophy recognizes and promotes the mutual assistance between the academic staff and students.

FOH has 49 staff members including 46 academic staff and 3 supporting staff. There are 5 Prof. PhDs (10.9%); 12 Assoc. Prof. Dr. (26.1%), 19 PhDs (41.3%), 9 PhD students (19.5%), 1 MA (2.2%); academic staff who hold PhD and MA titles are 36 (78.3%) and 10 (21.7%), respectively. In addition, Faculty of History has co-operated with a large number of prestigious adjunct and visiting scholars from domestic/international universities, research institutes and organizations. Faculty of History organizational structure is as follow.

FOH organizational structure in 2019

Organization:

Dean: Assoc. Prof. Vu Van Quan. PhD

Vice-Dean: Assoc. Prof. Tran Thien Thanh. PhD; Assoc. Prof. Dang Hong Son. PhD and Pham Van Thuy. PhD.

Departments and Divisions:

Department of Vietnamese Ancient and Medieval History: Head, Prof. Eminent Teacher. Vu Minh Giang. Dr. Sc

Department of Vietnamese Modern and Contemporary History: Head, Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Dinh Le. PhD

Department of World History; Head, Prof. Nguyen Van Kim. PhD

Department of Vietnam Communist Party: Head, Assoc. Prof. Ngo Dang Tri. PhD

Department of Historiography and Sources: Head, Assoc.Prof. Hoang Hong. PhD

Department of Cultural Studies: Head, Prof. Nguyen Quang Ngoc. PhD

Department of Archaeology: Head, Assoc. Prof. Lam Thi My Dzung. PhD

Department of Urban History: Head, Assoc. Prof. Hoang Anh Tuan. PhD

Secretariat and Library: Person in charge. Mr. Do Huu Thanh

            Faculty of History has completely transformed programmes with credit-based approach from the academic year-based and began implementing the credit- based programmes since commencing the cohort K52 (code name QH-2007-X), building expected learning outcomes for the curriculum from 2012 and continuously adjusting, updating expected learning outcomes as requested by VNU and USSH in 2015.

Currently, Faculty of History is running two undergraduate programmes (Standard and Honor Programmes), whose disciplines consists of Archaeology, Vietnamese History, Global History, History of Vietnamese Communist Party, Culture Studies and Vietnamese Cultural History, and Urban History.

The specialized disciplines of MA programme include Archaeology, Vietnamese History, Global History, History of Vietnamese Communist Party, Historical Methodology, Culture Studies and Vietnamese Cultural History, and Culture Management.

The specialized disciplines of PhD programme include Archaeology, Vietnamese History, Global History, History of Vietnamese Communist Party, and Historical Methodology.

Students are assisted with information on accommodations, job placement, internship, practical and other counseling if required. In addition, students have the opportunities to receive scholarships from individuals and organizations inside and outside the country such as Foundation for Promotion of Historical Education, BIDV, Chung-Soo, Aeon 1% club, Kumho Asiana, Shinnyo-En, Lawrence S.ting, PonyChung, Yamada, Mitsubishi, Thakral-in, Sewa, etc. In addition, Faculty of History is currently managing two foundations, namely Le Van Huu Foundation offering 15 scholarships for Faculty of History students annually and Dinh Xuan Lam Foundation offering 22 scholarships for BA and MA students and PhD candidates in History of six universities (USSH, Hanoi National University of Education, Vinh University, Ha Tinh University, Hue University) with a total value of scholarships of 200 million VND.

Well aware of the importance of research in education in both graduate and post-graduate levels, Faculty of Historyalways pays attention to research activities, considering them as one of the main tasks of Faculty of History members. In order to promote research activities, FOH encourages and supports the establishment of research groups. Faculty of History strong research groups are East Sea Commerce Research Group, Cultural Resources Studies Group, Thang Long - Hanoi Culture Research Group, Local History Research Group, Archaeology and Preservation. Since 2014, Faculty of History has received important research missions given by the Vietnamese Communist Party and the State. For instance, in the national programme on compiling a 30-volume Vietnamese History, which was assigned to the Association of Vietnamese Historians by the Secretariat of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Faculty of History’s members are in charge of 8 volumes. In addition, several State- and Ministry-level projects on Vietnamese History, Champa History, the History of Southern Region, the History of Vietnamese Discoveries and Explorations of Sea and Islands had the participation of Faculty of History’s members. Faculty of History is chairing one volume on History in the National Encyclopedia Project.

The result of these research projects are realized in the publications. Faculty of History’s members has published a wide range of research work by prestigious publishers or on domestic and international journals. Within the period 2014-2018, Faculty of History members published 366 journal articles of which 32 are in foreign languages, 12 book chapters, and 55 books, of which 5 are in foreign languages.

Research orientation of Faculty of History has been focusing on eight themes, including 1) the History of the Central, Highland and Southern regions; 2) Urban and Urbanization in Vietnam; 3) Cultural Regions and the cultural exchanges within Vietnam and between Vietnam and the World; 4) Relations and the Exploration of the Vietnamese in East Sea; 5) International relations, international integration and the development path of Vietnam; 6) Vietnam’s culture and history in the regional and global context; 7) Foreign historical sources about history and culture of Vietnam; and 8) basic researches to serve the public.

Faculty of History always pays much attention on expanding both local and international cooperations. The Faculty are having the cooperation with about 50 international research and educational institutions, such as University of California Fullerton, University of California Berkeley, University of Montana, University of Princeto, University of Texas, University of Hawaii, University of Ohio, University of Toronto, Australian National University, Monash University, Leiden University, Amsterdam University, Humboldt University, Passau University, University of Frankfurt, University of Konstanz, University of Giessen, University of Greifswald, German Institute of Archaeology, University of Paris I, Paris VII, University of Auckland, National University of Singapore, Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, Tokyo University, Osaka University, Hiroshima University, Kansai University, Showa University, Kanazawa University, Seoul National University, Inha University, Beijing University, Sun-Yat-Sen University, Xiamen University, Jilin University, Fudan University, Hunan University, National Cheng Kung University, National Dong Hwa University, and many others.

Faculty of History considers that the mutual assisstance between the students and teachersis an important principle of the Faculty of History. Accordingly, two primary subjects are teachers and students, and two main activities are the teaching of lecturers and the studying of students. The teaching and studying links dialectically and relies on each other to be in being and to develop. Thanks to the teachers' instruction, the studying of students makes progress; on the contrary, the teaching of lectures becomes deeper and deeper.