Rate My Professor Carlyle Thayer

Thayer's research focuses on Vietnamese politics, including leadership and generational change in the Vietnam Communist Party, decision-making processes, elections, legal reform, the National Assembly's role, political dissent, civil society emergence, human rights, religious freedom, ethnic minorities, and political legitimacy. He examines the Vietnam People's Army's leadership, defence diplomacy, arms procurement, force modernization, and socio-economic roles. Additional interests encompass Vietnam's foreign policy toward China, the United States, and ASEAN; multilateral Asia-Pacific security institutions like ASEAN and the ASEAN Regional Forum; China's defence cooperation with Southeast Asia; and climate change's security impacts. With over 500 publications, key works include "Vietnam and the challenge of political civil society" (2009), "ASEAN's Code of Conduct in the South China Sea: A Litmus Test for Community-Building?" (2012), "Political Legitimacy of Vietnam's One Party-State: Challenges and Responses" (2009), and the book "War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Viet-Nam, 1954–60" (2021). Thayer has supervised more than a dozen PhD theses at UNSW, innovated military education through crisis simulations and distance learning, and provides expert media commentary in over 200 interviews annually. In 2020, he was recognized by Marquis Who's Who as a Top Educator for leadership in Southeast Asian studies and professional military education.