About this Event
Excavating the Ghosts of War: Interdisciplinary Approaches to MIA Recovery
Location: Burns Hall, 3rd Floor, Room 3015/19
2025 marks fifty years since the Vietnam War’s end and thirty years since the normalization of US-Vietnamese diplomatic relations. Today, both countries benefit from a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that structures collaboration on issues of trade, science and technology, humanitarian assistance, regional security, and defense—a once-unthinkable scenario half a century ago. Although the war’s tragic legacies endure, they have also formed the remarkable basis for reconciliation and cooperation between both nations on issues concerning unexploded ordinance removal, Agent Orange remediation, and the recovery of US and Vietnamese war dead still declared “missing-in-action” (MIA). The MIA accounting mission, in particular, is considered a hallmark of the modern US-Vietnamese partnership—a rare example of former adversaries working together to account for personnel killed or missing in wartime. In the United States, this effort is led by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), which regularly partners with academic institutions to identify and recover the remains of missing American military personnel from past conflicts.
This talk examines how universities across the United States—from Hawai’i to the Heartland—contribute to these efforts by discussing the Missing-In-Action Accounting and Recovery Coalition (MARC), an emerging interdisciplinary research initiative at Purdue University that supports the DPAA’s Vietnam War recovery mission. The MARC integrates public history with quantitative and qualitative social science methods, fostering participation across disciplines to advance three interrelated lines of effort: (1) public-facing archival and data-driven research to locate MIA servicemembers and contribute to a bipartisan undertaking of national importance; (2) the development of a research hub that models interdisciplinary collaboration; and (3) the production of scholarship that examines the POW/MIA recovery issue in the United States and connects it to broader dynamics of death commemoration, conflict resolution, and postwar cooperation between former belligerents.
The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.
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Dr. Andrew Bellisari is an Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University. Prior to joining Purdue, he was an assistant professor and founding faculty member at Fulbright University Vietnam in Hồ Chí Minh City and a Vietnam Program Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Specializing in the history of modern France and its colonial empire, Dr. Bellisari’s work addresses questions related to warfare, state- and nation-building, and civil society. Dr. Bellisari’s research explores the political, social, and cultural dimensions of decolonization, particularly in North Africa and Southeast Asia. Dr. Bellisari’s research and writing have been featured in Time Magazine, The Journal of Contemporary History, The Journal of North African Studies, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, and Kerning Cultures.
Dr. Bellisari holds a B.A. in History and French from Rutgers University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the East-West Center, the Krupp Foundation, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Parking information: Parking at the East-West Center is administered by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Commuter Services. is available at green Pay-to-Park visitor stalls and in the twoLower Campus parking structures.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
East-West Center (John A. Burns Hall), 1601 East-West Road, Honolulu, United States
USD 0.00
