Dung Le

Xin chào! I’m Dung, a PhD student in Geography at UC Berkeley. After high school, I spent three gap years before returning to Oberlin in 2025, where I completed an honors thesis rooted in an earlier experience interning with a coffee agroforestry development project in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Working with K’Ho Indigenous farmers first drew me to a contradiction that has since shaped my research: why do interventions promising sustainability and empowerment so often coexist with new forms of dispossession?

My thesis examined how development projects, state power, and market integration reshape Indigenous livelihoods and forest landscapes. I argued that even well-intentioned climate initiatives can extend state territorial control by recasting forests as carbon assets and farmers as subjects of conservation, while leaving more capital-intensive forms of environmental transformation largely unchallenged. I’m now interested in the proliferation of plastic greenhouses in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, tracing how environmental histories and transnational investment have made intensive horticulture both possible and profitable. More broadly, I’m drawn to political ecology and the geographies of extraction, from agricultural frontiers to Cambodia’s scam compounds, where I’m beginning to explore how contemporary regimes of forced labor might be understood through the spatial organization of coercion and exploitation.

If you can’t find me in McCone, I’m probably on a mission to discover the Bay Area’s best matcha and patisserie, or spending at least two hours a day in the kitchen experimenting with new Vietnamese recipes. I also sing karaoke, occasionally play the ukulele, and have recently taken up Chinese calligraphy. I welcome any recommendations you might have and will happily trade a pastry tip for a recipe.