Ann Ngoc Tran (she/her/hers) is a 2025-2026 UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies and Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. 

​

Ann is an interdisciplinary historian of Vietnam's multiple diasporas, with specific interests in studies of forced migrations, Southeast Asian settler colonialism, and refugee life/deathworlds at the edges of nation-states and empires. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Nonarrival: Vietnam and the Vanishing Points of Diaspora, a study of diaspora histories beyond nationalist anchors of arrival. Her dissertation, "The Ark Was Already Gone: A History of Boat Refugee Nonarrival," was awarded the 2025 Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for Best Dissertation by the American Studies Association.

​

Ann was a recipient of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Dissertation Fellowship in 2024. ​Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Radical History Review, The Journal of American - East Asian Relations, diaCRITICS, and The SAGE Encyclopedia for Refugee Studies.

​

Outside of academia, she volunteers at a museum in Southern California. Born in Saigon and raised in Dallas, Texas, she currently lives in Los Angeles with her partner and her two rambunctious pugs.