Minh-Ha Pham

Minh-Ha T. Pham is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies. Her research examines how the Internet is reorganizing fashion work and the global fashion supply chain.

Her current research focuses on the secondhand clothing industry in Viet Nam, from its importation as a relief good in the 1980s to its status as an illicit and flourishing industry. This project maps Viet Nam’s secondhand clothing supply chain — which includes US, European, and Japanese charities and commercial exporters; wholesalers in Cambodia and Viet Nam; commercial waste collectors; importers; tailors; and in-person and online sellers —  to understand the cultural, social, economic, and environmental significance of Viet Nam’s secondhand clothing industry as it emerges at the crossroads of rapid economic development and climate change.

PhD, 2007, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

• Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Social Media’s Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property (Duke University Press 2022)
• Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging (Duke University Press 2015)
• “A World Without Sweatshops: Abolition Not Reform” in Abolition Feminisms: Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice (Haymarket Books, 2022).
• “‘How to Make a Mask’: Quarantine Feminism and Global Supply Chains,” Feminist Studies 46.2 (2020)
• “As Fashion Lines are Praised for Making Masks, Don’t Ignore Garment Workers,” Truthout.org (2020)
• “How to Fix the Fashion Industry’s Racism,” The New Republic (2019)
• “Stories the Fashion Media Won’t Tell,” The Nation (2019)