Aso Earns ACLS Fellowship for Research on Agent Orange’s Legacy
ALBANY, N.Y. (May 1, 2026) — University at Albany historian Michitake Aso has been awarded a 2026 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for his research on the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Aso, an associate professor in the departments of History and East Asian Studies, was selected as one of 63 fellows from a pool of more than 2,000 applicants nationwide. The ACLS Fellowship Program, one of the most competitive honors in the humanities and social sciences, supports scholars pursuing significant research across a range of disciplines.
Tracing the legacy of Agent Orange
The fellowship will support Aso’s current book project, which examines how Vietnamese medical doctors and scientists shaped global understanding of the long-term health and environmental effects of Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the Vietnam War.
His work focuses on TCDD dioxin, a toxic contaminant linked to birth defects, cancer and other serious health conditions, and the Vietnamese physicians and scientists who confronted the consequences of environmental warfare through medical care, field research and political advocacy.
“The most surprising thing has been discovering how and to what extent Vietnamese physicians and scientists shaped knowledge about TCDD dioxin,” Aso said. “These activist experts did this work as clinicians, as researchers and as advocates all at once. Founding a 'Peace Village' to care for affected children and studying their family histories were, for them, inseparable acts.”
Drawing on oral histories and archival research across Vietnam, the United States and Europe, Aso traces how these researchers built international networks to advance understanding of dioxin exposure and press for recognition, treatment and ecological justice.
His work also draws on materials from the Heritage Park of Vietnamese Scientists, where he is among the first scholars to conduct extensive research.
Aso said the lessons of this work extend far beyond Vietnam.
“Agent Orange was sprayed between 1961 and 1971, but its consequences are still unfolding in Vietnamese families across multiple generations, at a dioxin contaminated hot spot on a former U.S. airbase, in U.S. veterans and their children and in the slow, contested work of remediation that continues to the present,” Aso said.
The research points to a broader tension in post-conflict societies. “U.S. and Vietnamese officials pushed for harmony to advance bilateral relations without assigning blame,” he said. “Activist experts pushed for justice,” including efforts to establish culpability, demand compensation and advocate for victims and the land.
He added that the Agent Orange experience offers a model for how knowledge and accountability can work together in addressing environmental and public health challenges today.
The fellowship provides dedicated time for research and writing, something Aso said is critical to advancing complex, global historical work. He credited UAlbany’s support — including research funding and travel opportunities — with helping make the project possible.
Bringing history to life for students
At UAlbany, Aso brings this work into the classroom, where students connect with people involved in the project and its real-world impact. In one course, undergraduates are transcribing the diaries of Charles Bailey, an agricultural economist who helped open U.S.-Vietnam cooperation on Agent Orange to assist severely disabled Vietnamese and clean up the dioxin, offering a firsthand view into the scientific and diplomatic work surrounding dioxin.
“For my students, interacting with someone who was in the room when that history was being made is an important experience in their education,” Aso said. “Their questions and desire to know more have pushed me to sharpen my thinking about this research and to articulate why it matters.”
Aso is a global environmental historian whose scholarship has explored the intersections of agriculture, medicine and health in Vietnam and the broader French colonial and postcolonial worlds. His 2018 book, Rubber and the Making of Vietnam, earned major awards from the Agricultural History Society and the Forest History Society, and his work has appeared in leading journals in Asian studies and the history of science.