Associate Lecturer/ Researcher teaching Digital Design based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia
Quynh Nhu Bui - Curriculum Vitae | Portfolio Website | ORCID iD
📧 Email address: [email protected] | [email protected]
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nhu-bui-98437218a/
🔗 Academic Profile: https://academics.rmit.edu.au/nhu-bui
Nhu Bui is an Associate Lecturer in the Master of Animation, Games & Interactivity (MAGI) Program and a PhD Candidate in Design at RMIT University. Her research sits at the intersection of extended reality (XR), digital heritage, sensory ethnography, and community-engaged design. Growing up in Saigon, Vietnam and now based in Melbourne, she is driven by a commitment to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage—everyday practices, memories, gestures, atmospheres, and craft-based knowledge—through innovative 3D, AR/VR, and interactive media methods.
Nhu's research explores how emerging technologies can meaningfully translate cultural nuance, hybridity, and lived experience without flattening complexity or reinforcing extractive heritage practices. Through autoethnography, 3D photogrammetry, creative practice research, and community workshops across Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and the Vietnamese diaspora in Melbourne, she investigates how digital tools can hold embodied, multisensory, and intergenerational knowledge. Her current PhD project examines street vending culture in Vietnam through field-based scanning, sensory documentation, and AR prototyping, probing how digital representations can evoke affective atmospheres and ethical modes of preservation.
Nhu is passionate about research that is grounded, relational, and accountable to the communities it serves. Her practice advocates for reflexive digital heritage methodologies, ethical photogrammetry, and storytelling approaches that foreground care, cultural specificity, and user experience. She has presented internationally at SIGGRAPH, ISEA, DIGRAA, and Autodesk, and contributed to collaborative research projects with the Brunswick Design District (BDD), Merri-bek City Council, and the City of Melbourne.
Her broader interests include: – Sensory and immersive media practices – Decolonial and critical heritage studies – UX/UI and web-based interactive design – AR/VR for cultural preservation and education – Creative-technological pedagogy – Vietnamese cultural identity and diasporic memory
Associate Lecturer - Master of Animation, Games & Interactivity Design (School of Design) | Jul 2027 – Present