Tim Doling

Born in Bristol (England), Tim Doling obtained a Masters degree in Medieval Welsh History from the University of Wales Aberystwyth before embarking on a professional career in the cultural sector, running theatres and arts centres in Coleraine (Northern Ireland), Horsham (England) and Hong Kong, and undertaking cultural projects in Asia, Africa and Europe for UNESCO, the British Council and Visiting Arts.

Since the 1990s, Tim has been based mainly in Việt Nam, where from 1999 to 2004 he worked with the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information on a Ford Foundation-funded project to develop arts management training curricula in three Hà Nội universities. During the same period, he created the acclaimed online Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos Cultural Profiles, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. He later worked with the Ministry of Culture of Slovakia to create the bilingual online Slovakia Cultural Profile, and with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture to create the first comprehensive English-language Afghanistan Cultural Profile web portal.

In recent years, in addition to working as translator and cultural tourism consultant, Tim has returned to historical research, authoring numerous books on Việt Nam including The Railways and Tramways of Việt Nam (2012) and the history-heritage guidebooks North West Việt Nam (2010), North East Việt Nam (2010), Exploring Huế (2018), Exploring Saïgon-Chợ Lớn, Vanishing heritage of Hồ Chí Minh City (2019) and Exploring Quảng Nam (2020).

The book Exploring Saïgon-Chợ Lớn, Vanishing heritage of Hồ Chí Minh City (2019) was awarded third prize in the "National Awards for External Information," 2020.

Future plans include the books Exploring Hà Nội and the Red River Delta and Exploring the Mekong Delta.

The author would like to thank all contributors to this Flickr collection, in particular Janez Pintaric and Michael Pass