Growing up in San Jose, California, Kevin D. Pham never imagined he'd become a professor of political theory. As a teenager, he spent his time skating, drawing, and dreaming of becoming a tattoo artist. But during his time at UC Irvine, a single trip shifted everything.

In 2009, Kevin joined the Olive Tree Initiative (our teams org before CIEL) on a journey to the Middle East. It was his first time in a conflict zone, meeting directly with people on all sides — civilians, activists, politicians. “It made politics real,” he later reflected. The trip challenged his assumptions, deepened his empathy, and sparked a lifelong interest in how narratives and ideologies shape political conflict.

That trip didn't just open his mind — it changed his path. After graduating from UCI in political science, Kevin moved to Vietnam to explore his heritage and learn more about life under post-colonial systems. From there, he earned a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship and pursued a master’s in Conflict Resolution and Governance at the University of Amsterdam. While studying, he also served as an alumni coordinator for the Olive Tree Initiative, helping guide others through the same kind of transformative experience that had shaped him.

Kevin eventually returned to California to complete his Ph.D. in political theory at UC Riverside. His research focused on Vietnamese anti-colonial thinkers and the political ideas that emerged under French rule. He spent a year in Paris digging through archives and later published The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2024), the first book to bring Vietnamese political thought into mainstream political theory. Kevin's book was the recipient of the 2025 Ralph J. Bunche Award. This award honors the best book in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism and is given out annually by the American Political Science Association.

Today, Kevin is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam where he teaches courses on decolonization, global political thought, and free speech. He also co-hosts two podcasts on Vietnamese history, "Nam Phong Dialogues" and "Viet History Makers," and continues to be a key member of the CIEL team. In 2023, he helped lead the development of CIEL’s Vietnam and Cambodia program, drawing on his academic research and personal experience to design a curriculum that connects colonial legacies, political violence, and reconciliation. He contributed to building the trip’s structure, speaker network, and reading materials, and has guided student and faculty delegations in 2023, 2024, and 2025. For many students, he’s not only a faculty guide, but also a model of what it looks like to turn field experience into long-term inquiry and impact.

From art and skating to peacebuilding and scholarship, Kevin's journey shows how far a shift in perspective can take you — and how one trip can plant the seed for a global career grounded in empathy, curiosity, and purpose.