Each year, we host a number of scholars through our postdoctoral fellowship and scholars-in-residence program. While in residence, scholars have an opportunity to advance their academic research and facilitate professional networks.
Postdoctoral Fellow 2022-2023
Youngeun Koo
Youngeun Koo is a 2022–23 Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the UCI Center for Critical Korean Studies. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of modern Korean history, specializing in Cold War humanitarianism, postcolonial social welfare, and state–society relations. She received her PhD in Korean Studies (summa cum laude) from the University of Tübingen in 2022. Her current book project examines the intersection of humanitarian liberalism and developmental authoritarianism throughout the history of South Korean international adoption, from its systematization after the military coup in 1961 through the decline of the humanitarian aid era in 1979. Tracing the institutionalization of international adoption from the perspective of social work, her project reveals novel processes of governmentality in postcolonial, Cold War South Korea. Her research has been published in the Journal of Asian Studies. During her fellowship at CCKS, Koo has been working on her book manuscript and co-organizing a conference on South Korean adoption. Koo also contributes to the state investigations into international adoption and potential human rights violations recently launched in South Korea, Sweden, and Denmark.
Visiting Scholar Fellow 2021-2022
Seoin Shin
Seoin Shin is a professor of the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Hallym University. Her research area is Korean grammar, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis.
In Korean grammar, she has studied sentence pattern, argument structure, semantic role and so on. As she is interested in using the knowledge of grammar for natural language processing, she has attended several projects of building annotated corpora.
By using corpus linguistic methods, she studies not only Korean grammar but also discourse analysis. In discourse analysis, she has studied various keywords such as democracy, green, growth, distribution, welfare, which were issues in Korean society.
While staying at UCI, she studies changes in basic income discourse in Korean newspapers.
Chang Gyu Choi
Chang Gyu Choi is a Professor at Hanyang University’s Graduate School of Urban Studies. With diverse academic and practical experiences in urban planning, urban design, and real estate developments, he joined Hanyang University, one of Korea’s most prestigious universities, in 2009. He received his B.A (1990), M.S (1992) and Ph.D (1997) in Urban Planning from Hanyang University, Seoul and MsRED (2004) from Columbia University, New York. In pursuit of a career in urban planning and design, he has focused on mixing economic and business-driven mind with the understanding of public benefits.
He received the Academic Prize in 2015 from Korea Planners Association which was established in 1958, Korea’s oldest and most renowned academic organization in the field of planning. He has authored more than 60 articles in leading academic journals such as Urban Studies, Cities, Land Use Policy, Environment and Planning B, Journal of Korea Planners Association, and etc. In addition, he has energetically participated in seminars, conferences, and workshops as chair, co-chair, and vice-chair for Korean government, Seoul City government, the World Bank, and etc.