Centre for the Study of Korea People

Michelle Cho
Director, Centre for the Study of Korea

Affiliated faculty and librarians

Research associates

Affiliated graduate students

Sophie Bowman headshot
 

s.bowman@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: twentieth century South Korea, gender, women's literature, life writing, literary translation

Zhuoran "Ran" Deng headshot
 

Zhuoran "Ran" Deng, PhD Candidate, Centre for Comparative Literature

ran.deng@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Sexual consent, transpacific critique, gender and queer theory, political philosophy, media studies

Dissertation (Working) Title: A Biopolitics of Sexual Consent: Queer Temporalities and Asian Femininity

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Seongpil Jeong, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies

pil.jeong@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Modern Korean History, Culture of Capitalism, Everyday Life, Consumption and Environment

Dissertation Title (TBD): Vacation Boom in the Yusin era: The Politics of Consumption in 1970s South Korea

Yehji Jeong headshot
 

yehji.jeong@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Empires, Colonialisms, East Asia, Manchuria, Mobility, Racial Politics and Politics of Representation

Dissertation Title: The Land of Bandits: Outlaws, Mobility, and Racial Politics in Manchuria, 1905-1945

Aliju Kim headshot
 

Aliju Kim, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies

aliju.kim@mail.utoronto.ca

Dissertation Title (Tentative): Decadent Translations and Transgressions in Transwar Korean Literature

Aliju Kim's dissertation examines Decadence as an aesthetic mode in literary narratives that relate to discourses of modernity and modernization, empire, and capitalist expansion. Her other interests include memory, space-time, and family sagas.

Haryung Kim headshot
 

HaRyung Kim, PhD student, Department of Sociology

hryh.kim@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Gender, Military, State, Post-Cold war

Hyun-Chul Kim headshot
 

hchul.kim@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Carceral spaces, postcolonialism, disability, queer geographies, animal geographies, East Asia

Dissertation Title: Leper’s Paradise: Carceral Politics of Cooperative Village and Rural Reform in South Korea

Joonsik Kim headshot
 

Joonsik Kim, PhD student, Department of Sociology

joonsik.kim@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Political, Economic, Comparative-historical Sociology, Financialization, and the Politics of Credit.

Juwon Kim headshot
 

jwn.kim@mail.utoronto.ca  

Research Interests: modern and contemporary Korean history; film and media studies; decolonization and postcolonial theory; Cold War liberalism; Asian American and diaspora studies

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Soomin Kim, PhD student, Department of History

soominkyle.kim@mail.utoronto.ca 

Research Interests: East Asia; Human/non-human animal relations; Colonialism; Cold War liberalism

Inwook Kwon headshot
 

inwook.kwon@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Immigration policy, social services, welfare state, multiculturalism, immigration attitudes

Grayson Lee headshot
 

Grayson Lee, PhD student, Faculty of Information

grayson.lee@utoronto.ca

Research interests: Transpacific studies, the Cold War in Asia, the South Korean digital culture industry, and legacies of race, war, and mass violence

Juyeon Lee headshot
 

Juyeon Lee, PhD Candidate, Division of Social and Behavioural Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

juy.lee@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Occupational Safety and Health, Work and Health, Health Inequality, Public Health System

Dissertation Title: The Political Economy of Occupational Safety and Health Regulation in South Korea

Sangah Lee
 

Sangah Lee, PhD Candidate, Ethnomusicology

sangah.lee@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: voice, silence, violence, activism, gender studies, Korean traditional and popular music culture

Dissertation Title: Unexpected Voice: The Sonic Collective of the 2016-17 South Korean Candlelight Vigils

Seo Young Lee headshot
 

Seo Young Lee, PhD student, Adult Education and Community Development (OISE)

seo.lee@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: undocumented immigrants, the social construction of citizenship, adult education, statelessness.

A light blue Person icon on a dark blue background
 

ssoo.lee@mail.utoronto.ca 

Research Interests: North Korean History, Modern Korean History, Infrastructure, Everyday Life

Dissertation Title (TBD): Electrifying North Korea: The Politics of Electrical Infrastructure in Cold War North Korea

Youngroung Lee headshot
 

youngr.lee@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Work and Labour, Social movements, Gender, Platform Economy

Dissertation Title: The Contested Making of Gig Workers: A Comparative Study of Global Capital in the Gig Economy in Seoul and Toronto

Jessica Morgan-Brown headshot
 

jessica.morgan.brown@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Colonial Korea, language and literature, vernacularization movements

Do-Hyeong Myeong headshot
 

Do-Hyeong Myeong, PhD student, Department of Anthropology

dh.myeong@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Decolonization, Literature, Archives, Korean Diaspora

Samuel Yoon headshot
 

Samuel Yoon, PhD Candidate, Women & Gender Studies Institute and Sexual Diversity Studies

Samuelv.yoon@mail.utoronto.ca

Research Interests: Asian American Critique, Queer Diaspora, & Queer Performance

Dissertation Title: Defamiliarizing Violence: Performance and a Queer Diasporic Critique of Asian American Attachments