In 1987, he received his undergraduate degree at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., United States.
In 2000, he defended his PhD at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (IV Section, Historical and Philological Sciences).
In 2012, his Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach was included in the prestigious list of Outstanding Academic Titles 2012 compiled by the American magazine Choice.
[3] He is also co-editor of the eight-volume series From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective, published by University of California Press.
[4] In his book Going Indochinese: Contesting Concepts of Space and Place in French Indochina (University of Hawa’ii Press, 2012), he questions the concept of French Indochina by analyzing the interactions among Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians and shows how a range of Vietnamese nationalists imagined the future of their nation in Indochinese terms.