Stephen James is an American-born, British dual-national. He recently returned to the United States after 25 years working as a consultant in intercultural communication in the Philippines, Soviet Central Asia, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Germany.
Stephen completed a BA in History (1984) at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Master of Philosophy at Goldsmiths College, the University of London, in Media and Communications (2011), with an emphasis on Transnational Studies. He was brought up in Vietnam during the “Vietnam/American War Era” (1962-1975), and has returned to those roots in pursuit of further graduate study.
During the past three years at the University of California, Riverside, Stephen was the recipient of a Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship, working concurrently on an MA in Southeast Asian Studies (completed in 2015), and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology (projected completion in 2017). Stephen received an Andrew W. Mellon Grant in 2016.
Stephen is carrying out a multi-sited, longitudinal study of Vietnamese migration, focusing on forced migration through the Vietnam-Hong Kong-London trajectory. In addition to his appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Stephen also received an appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the Southeast Asia Research Centre at City University of Hong Kong in the Winter of 2017.