Van Tran Nguyen (she/her) is a Vietnamese American artist-scholar, practicing filmmaker, curator, and multimedia artist. In 2017, Tran Nguyen earned a master's degree in fine arts from the State University of New York, at Buffalo. Then in 2021, she earned her doctorate in the Philosophy of Electronic Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Her research investigates Asian American performance and media(tions) of the diaspora. Tran Nguyen’s monograph, No Bodies Home: Mediations of Performance in Exile explores Cold War technological advancement and argues that racialized and gendered bodies of the Asian diaspora are the material and technological output of warfare. Her first short film, ERIE COUNTY SMILE, was released in 2021 and is available for public access via the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Her first full-length feature film, THE MOTHERLOAD, premiered at the Hawaii International Film Festival with support from the Vilcek Foundation’s New American Perspectives.

In the fall of 2021, she was appointed the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance and Technology Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently an Early Career Fellow at the UCLA Center on Race & Digital Justice. In the fall of 2024, she joined the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown University as the Assistant Professor of Performance and Media. Dr. Tran Nguyen teaches courses across theory and practice including performance, digital filmmaking, and film & media history.