Dr Lan-Phuong PHAN is a researcher and University professor with multicultural background. She has 15 years of experience in various fields of research and practice. An academic trained at prestigious schools and Universities in France and Germany, majoring in literature, history and social sciences, she sees her capacity to innovate, teach and learn as her major asset.
A specialist of the elite intellectual and political networks in the context of XVIIIth Century emerging European nation-states, she has developed original research processes based upon systematic analysis of online scientific corpus and research material, connecting places, people and culture history.
Born in Hanoï and raised in Viet Nam, educated in Germany and France, Dr Phan speaks fluently four languages, German, French, English and Vietnamese. A Student at Lycée Henri IV in Paris and then graduating from the most prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lan-Phuong Phan then spent two years as a Lecturer at the University of Heidelberg, Germany and completed a first PhD thesis at EHESS, a renowned international Research Center on Social Studies in Paris. This work showcases alternative education methods and institutions in Germany and France over a century of competition between both states (1871-1981).
Dr Phan has also carried out extensive research on the religious and scientific ethics of Lutheranism and Pietism as well as on the economic and intellectual role of migrations. Her second PhD thesis at Paris IV La Sorbonne University offers a unique analysis of the practice of Staatsklugheit (public policy intelligence) under the reign of the fine scholar and accurate statesman Frederick the Great of Prussia.
As a Professor, Dr Phan has a long teaching experience in some of the most economically and socially deprived neighborhoods in the Paris Ile de France Region as well as with business school elite students, devoting her ability to teach and her skills for organization to develop capacity-building and learning processes that would allow her students to empower themselves and upgrade their ability to adapt to changing norms and contexts.
Dr Phan has co-directed since the early 2000’s several books and other publications on urban regeneration and urban development in France and globally.
With the European Union urban development programme Urbact, she has recently been part of a multidisciplinary research network aimed at strengthening social cohesion in neighbourhoods across Europe through integrated social strategies (CoNet programme). With UN-Habitat, she has taken part to a couple of EGMs and steering committee meetings during the initial launching phase of the World Urban Campaign. With the support of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs (ISTED) she has also contributed to the expertise of the organizations forming the Habitat Professionals Forum.
She believes in the role of well-connected talents and intelligence and in the virtue of smart multicultural environments to make change happen and help build more sustainable cities and living environments.