Huynh earned her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D from Princeton University. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, she worked as a sociology instructor in northeast China and as a lecturer in Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Huynh is currently working on a book manuscript, titled The City Within: Growing Up Vietnamese in Little Saigon, which examines the experiences of the children of Vietnamese refugees and their parents in Southern California. As part of this project, she recently completed a study of more than 600 transnational Vietnam-U.S. community organizations, and their development work and ties to the U.S. She is second-generation Vietnamese from Southern California.