‘Pure Water’: Perspectives on Agent Orange and Ecological Violence

Pure Water is an exhibition and roundtable program hosted by the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs on 12–13 November 2026. It marks 65 years since the United States began spraying Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam in 1961, during the Second Indochina War. Contaminated with dioxin, Agent Orange left behind lasting environmental and health consequences, affecting not only exposed communities in Vietnam but also Australian veterans and the Vietnamese diaspora in Australia. Featuring an installation by Vietnamese Australian artist James Nguyen, the program examines Vietnamese perspectives on Agent Orange and places them in dialogue with broader questions about the relationship between ecology and violence.


Agenda
Thursday 12 November 2026

• 11am–1pm: Private exhibition preview for PhD students & morning tea, with James Nguyen (Atrium)

• 1–2pm: Lunch and informal opening of the exhibition (Atrium)

• 5–5:30pm: Official public opening of the exhibition, with drinks & canapés (Atrium)

• 5:30–7pm: Roundtable 1: Vietnamese Perspectives on Agent Orange and the Second Indochina War (Lecture Theatre 1)

Friday 13 November 2026

• 11am–12:30pm: Roundtable 2: Perspectives on Ecological Violence: Exploitation, Ecocide and Environmentalism (Lecture Theatre 1)

• 4pm: Exhibition closes

Speakers

Dr James Nguyen (Australian-Vietnamese Artist, Melbourne) was born in Bảo Lộc, Việt Nam in 1982. He lives, makes and writes in Murrumbeena, Naarm. James often works with his family and friends to find fleeting moments of intimacy, play, and poetic justice. Leaning on the tropes of cinema, the false exceptionalism of diaspora and broken languages, Nguyen creates new encounters that could be described as incisive, irreverent and broadly irrelevant. He has presented work and projects at institutions including the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, ACCA, the Sydney Opera House; and received the UNSW Dean’s Award for his PhD and the ABC Top5 Researcher for the Art2.

Dr Ngoc Lan Tran completed her PhD at the Department of Asian Studies at University of Adelaide. Her thesis, 'Un/forgetting Agent Orange: Towards a Reimagining of Vietnamese Forests', examines the legacies of chemical warfare in the aftermath of the Vietnam War using postmaterial feminist theories and diffractive methodologies. Her work focuses on the politics of Agent Orange and the presence of spirituality and reverence for life and nature in the life stories of Vietnamese victims.

Dr Charlotte Grech-Madin is a Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. As a peace researcher, Charlotte utilises qualitative, interview and fieldwork methodologies to uncover experiences of violence and the many tools supporting prevention. Through a social norm lens, her research looks at international humanitarian and environmental norms, in particular around water as indispensable to civilians. Her research on an evolving “water taboo” against using water as a weapon, based on fieldwork in India and the United States, has won two international awards and is published in International Security. 

Associate Professor Jessica Whyte is a Scientia Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, with a cross-appointment in the Faculty of Law. Her work integrates political philosophy, intellectual history and political economy to analyse contemporary forms of sovereignty, human rights, humanitarianism and militarism. She has a particular interest in the political stakes of mobilising the category of the human, and in the way claims to protect humanity are bound up with rationalisations for abandoning certain lives and for state-sanctioned killing.'

Dung Phan is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University. His PhD project examines Vietnamese agency in the transnational memory politics of Agent Orange/dioxin.

Professor Katerina Teaiwa is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist and award winning teacher of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American heritage born and raised in Fiji. She is Professor of Pacific Studies in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Felicity Tepper has extensive experience across the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government. Her career commenced as a judge’s associate in the South Australian Supreme Court, during which time she worked overseas for war crimes evidence-gathering. In the Commonwealth government, her work spanned the environment, health and gender/human rights portfolios. In the Australian Parliament, she worked first as a liaison officer for two Parliamentary Secretaries for the Environment, before becoming a senior researcher for the Senate Environment Committee.


Additional information:
Registration is required for this event. If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email bell.marketing@anu.edu.au. Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.

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