Ly Tran is a Professor in the School of Education, Deakin University. She leads the Australia-Vietnam Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy (EEES) – Internationalisation of Higher Education project, funded by the Australian Government Department of Education and co-hosted with Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training. She is project lead for the Best Practice in International Student Engagement project, funded by the Australian Government under the International Education Innovation Fund. Ly is the founder of Australia-Vietnam International Education Centre and leader of the International Student Graduate Employability Research Group.
Ly is a member of Deakin’s Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Centre, Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board, and member of Academic Board and an affiliated faculty member of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. She is a Visiting Professor at Phu Xuan University, Vietnam, Toyo University, Japan and Hitotsubashi University, Japan. She was also an Honorary Research Fellow (2015-2018), at University of Chester, England. She is the Vice-chair of IEEE Task force on Educational Data Mining, affiliated with the Data Mining and Big Data Analytics Technical Committee of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Ly has been involved in six Australian Research Council grants, including an ARC Future Fellowship, on the New Colombo Plan – Australian student mobility to the Indo-Pacific as public diplomacy, international students, education-work-migration nexus, student mobility, geopolitics of international education, internationalisation of teaching and learning and staff professional development in international education.
Ly has received a range of awards, accolades and fellowships for her research and contribution to practice, policy advice and commentary. She was named as one of Australia and ASEAN ‘Top 50’ voices on international education (The PIE 2023) and one of 20 Top International Education Influencers, Edruptor 2023. Ly received the Inaugural Melbourne Asia Game Changer Award by the Asia Society Australia for her work on enriching Australia-Asia connections and strengthening Australia-Vietnam education relationships. She also received the Inaugural Shining Star Award in Research in Noam Chomsky Global Connections Awards and IEAA’s Excellence Awards for Best Practice/Innovation in International Education (2014) and Professional Commentary in International Education (2021).
Ly has published extensively in a wide range of outlets, including books, refereed articles, good practice guides, media articles and commentaries in newspapers, and industry discussion papers. She received the Highly Commended Award in the 2019 Emerald Literati Awards. Her co-edited book, International Student Connectedness and Identity: Transnational Perspectives, received the Honorary Award in the 2019 Best Book Award category of the Comparative International Education Society (CIES) Study Abroad & International Students SIG.
Ly has been invited to give more than 100 keynote, plenary and featured talks at a wide range of national and international conferences, industry forums, community seminars and government roundtables on international education, international student experiences, graduate employability, the teaching and engagement of international students, inbound and outbound student mobility, the New Colombo Plan, and education in Vietnam.
Ly’s research has been cited in multiple languages and by more than 100 media outlets in Australia and internationally, such as ABC, SBS, the Australian, Australian Financial Review, the Age/SMH, Times Higher Education, the Saturday Paper, Xinhua, China Daily, East Asia Forum, VNExpress, Thanh Nien and VietnamNet. She has regularly written commentaries for newspapers including the Australian, ABC, Australian Financial Review, SBS, the Canberra Times, the Conversation, University World News, PIENews, Lowy’s Interpreter & Campus Review.