Rate My Professor Kevin Pham

Kevin Pham is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory (with tenure) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, within the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences and the programme group Challenges to Democratic Representation. He earned a B.A. in political science from the University of California, Irvine in 2010, an M.A. in conflict resolution from the University of Amsterdam in 2011 supported by a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Riverside in 2020. Prior to his current position, he served as Assistant Professor of Political Science at Gettysburg College from 2020 to 2023. His research examines the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century political thought, focusing on how ideas of democracy, freedom, and revolution travel across cultures and are adapted by thinkers engaged in political struggles outside the West, particularly Vietnamese political thought and concepts of dignity and shame in anticolonial contexts. Pham has developed teaching approaches emphasizing listening, perspective-taking, and global civic engagement through over a decade of leading experiential education trips to conflict-affected regions including the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam.