Whatever takes you here, welcome.
Let’s breathe
in and out
celebrating the present
My name is Nguyễn Hồng Nguyện. Nguyễn is my last name and Hồng Nguyện is my first name. I’m also known as HongNguyen and many people call me Gwen. I’m a haiku scholar – I love learning, and I love haiku. However, learning and haiku are not two different things. In my lifelong journey, learning and haiku form one cultural practice for my being~becoming.
I was born and grew up in Vietnam. As I was a little young girl, I always cherished a dream of living abroad and learning other languages and cultures. I left my home country in early 2007 to pursue a master program in Applied Linguistics from Saint Michael’s College, VT, USA. This learning experience led me to my first profession abroad at a private university in Japan as an assistant professor during 2010-2015. After living and working in Japan for almost five years, I went back to North America (Canada) to pursue a doctoral program in Education at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. I finished my study in mid-2020 (during the global pandemic 2020) with a dissertation about the integration of the haiku practice and mindfulness in elementary schooling.
Apart from specialized knowledge in curriculum studies, poetic approaches in education, I have also been teaching English to speakers of other languages in Vietnam, the US, Japan, and Canada, especially at the tertiary level since 2004. I have also worked with teacher candidates in some courses related to English Language Learning and Language and Literacy. I am interested in cultural, historical and aesthetic discourses of haiku and mindfulness and the integration of these cultural practices to cultivate happiness and wellbeing in different communities. I’m currently looking for opportunities to continue my learning and becoming in this beautiful province. I also wish to expand my research and practice with different communities in Canada.
I am happy that you are here and feel free to say hi or leave me a message if you have any questions.
Blessed be,
HongNguyen Gwen Nguyen