My article-based dissertation discusses responses by Buddhist communities to social, cultural, and environmental change in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, focusing on two minority groups: Hòa Hảo Buddhists and Khmer Theravada Buddhists. It examines how regional environmental governance shape the ways in which local Buddhist organizations respond to health and ecological challenges and how these responses, in turn, shape local institutions and engagement in regional solutions. The dissertation is based on multi-sited fieldwork over nine months in total, combining participant observation and interviews with religious leaders and followers, including Buddhist abbots and laypeople, ordinary community members, and local officials. It contributes to current scholarly debates in the environmental humanities using a theoretical framework drawn from political ecology, development studies, and Buddhist studies.
The dissertation uses the concepts environmentality and Engaged Buddhism to analyze an emerging subjectivity among Buddhist minorities in responding to health issues and ecological problems in the region. It discusses how this new subjectivity can potentially shift the environmental politics of marginalized communities from resistance to collaboration with state authorities. The dissertation compares and analyzes evolving practices, emerging strategies, and changing power relations within the two Buddhist communities in the context of pollution, climate change, and sustainable development initiatives.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: The Historical Emergence and Contemporary Entanglements of Political and Environmental Engagement in Southeast Asian Buddhism(s).
Nhung Lu Rots successfully defended her thesis on 9 January 2026.
Evaluation committee
- Professor Susan Darlington, Hampshire College (first opponent)
- Professor Minh Nguyen, Bielefeld University (second opponent)
- Professor Andrea Rota, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
Supervisors
- Professor Mette Halskov Hansen, University of Oslo
- Associate Professor Tâm Ngô, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies