SPEAKERS

Taeyoung Kim is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the School of Social Science and Humanities at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. Inspired by the traditions of critical media studies and the political economy of communications, his research centres on understanding the relationship between global and local forces in local cultural production at a time when many of the production and delivery mechanisms are reshaped and disrupted by US-based media and platform companies, and how the state responds to the globalisation of local cultural production.

Professor Bronwen Dalton is the Head of The Department of Management the University of Technology Sydney. She is also the founder and CEO of the charity Ruff Sleepers, a service that washes the dogs of homeless people.

Bronwen completed her PhD at the University of Oxford, where she was awarded the Oxford University Larkinson Award for Social Studies and was the recipient of the British Vice-Chancellors Committee Overseas Research Scholarship and the Korea Foundation Scholarship. Bronwen also has a BA from the Australian National University and a MA from Yonsei University, Korea. 

Bronwen has a long association with Korea and speaks Korean. She was recognised as one of 60 people who contributed to Australia-Korea relations and to be featured in the Australia-Korea Foundation publication "Australia-Korea Celebrating 60 Years 수교 60주년, 한국과 호주를 이어온 사람들" as one of "a small number of people and organisations who have made an outstanding contribution to bringing Australia and Korea closer together." She was a Director of the National Korean Studies Centre (NKSC) (1993 - 1996) a consortium of La Trobe University, Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Melbourne. Bronwen has focused her interests on North Korea. In 2013-2016 Bronwen is Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery grant titled “Women in the Rise of the Informal Market in North Korea”. This is the first major research project to investigate the role played by women in the emergence of a nascent capitalist economy in North Korea. Her book “North Korea’s Quite Transformation” will be published by Routledge in 2023.

Jinhee Park is an assistant professor in Digital Arts and Creative Industries at Lingnan University. She a media scholar who specializes in Korean cinema and visual culture. She received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. Prior to her PhD, she earned her MFA in Film at Syracuse University. Her first book project, Aesthetics of Reversibility: Post-Cold War Cinema in the Division of Korea explores the cinematic aesthetics that stemmed from the post-Cold War condition of divided Korea in the early twenty-first century. Her research uses an interdisciplinary methodology that includes film theory, cultural studies, new media studies, and East Asian Studies. 

Casandra Chistinean is a research member of the CEDITRAA Project. She primarily contributes to the work in Working Area D: and in Project 1.3 on Transformation of the Korean Wave. She is an academic assistant within the department of Korean Studies at Goethe University. Her dissertation focuses on the evolution in the depiction of women in Korean cinema, especially in the context of digitization. She holds two M.A. degrees in Modern East Asian Studies and International Peace and Conflict Studies, both at Goethe University, and a double partnership B.A. in International Relations and European Studies at Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca and Otto-von Guericke University Magdeburg as well as additional studies in media and film. Her focus areas are international relations, social sciences, Korean Studies and film studies.

Yonson Ahn is a professor and has been the director of Korean Studies at Frankfurt University since December 2014. She was previously a Korea Foundation guest professor at Goethe University of Frankfurt from May 2010 until September 2011. Prof. Ahn taught at the University of Leipzig in Germany and Ewha Women’s University, Ch’angwon National University and Tongguk University in Korea. She was a visiting scholar at Seoul National University and Waseda University in 2004, as well as at the University of Tokyo in 1996. She received her M.A. degree in Women’s Studies at Ewha Women’s University, Korea in 1988, and her PhD degree in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK in 2000. Prof. Ahn's research interests include transnational migration, such as transnational marriage migrants and Korean diasporas; gender-based violence in conflicts, especially the issues of “comfort women” during WWII; and historical controversies in East Asia and oral history. Her current research project is related to transnational migration and gender, focusing on negotiating gender and ethnic identities of Korean migrant workers in Germany and Asian marriage migrants in South Korea.

Dr. Jihye Kim is Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. A specialist in the migration and settlement experiences of diasporic Koreans, Dr Kim has published a number of articles on Korean migration to Argentina and Brazil. Her current research has expanded to include Korean migration to Latin America and Europe, in particular Korean migration to Germany and North Korean migration to the United Kingdom. Together with Dr Sunhee Koo (University of Auckland) she has coordinated as guest editor a special issue on “Unsettling Korean Migration: Multiple Trajectories and Experiences”, Korean Studies. Currently, also as guest editor, she is working with Prof Yonson Ahn (Goethe University of Frankfurt) on three special issues on Korean migration in Europe and the Global South.

Dr. Hyunah is a Lecturer in Music Psychology and Wellbeing at the University of Leeds in the UK, after working as a teaching fellow at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her interdisciplinary backgrounds (Music therapy, Psychology, Korean music, Child development & Intervention, Anthropology, and Education) let her explore various research topics, and she has been involved in different collaborative research projects such as a ‘Critical Disability Research Network’, ‘Music Therapy Awareness project’, ‘Education, Culture and Society’. In New Zealand and/or South Korea, Hyunah has worked as a registered music therapist and a clinical psychotherapist with a range of individuals and groups.

Dr JaeWook Ryu is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. JaeWook holds bachelor degrees in Information Systems, Communications, and Marketing; a master degree in Film Studies (Dongguk University); an MBA (University of Illinois); and a PhD in Film Studies (Lancaster University). He mainly looks into Korean cinema, Korean queer cinema, and K-Culture in the Korean Wave. Currently, Jaewook Ryu is planning a documentary film project about the life of indie-queer film directors in Korea.

Sangjoon Lee is an Associate Professor of Film Studies and Head of the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries (DA+CI) at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Lee is the author of Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network (Cornell University Press, 2020) and the editor/co-editor of Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media (University of Michigan Press, 2015), Rediscovering Korean Cinema (University of Michigan Press, 2019), The South Korean Film Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2023), and Asian Cinema and the Cultural Cold War (Amsterdam University Press, 2023). Lee is the recipient of the David H. Culbert Routledge-IAMHIST Prize for Best Article by an Established Scholar (2019). His works have been translated into Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian.

Andrew Sanggyu Lee is a doctoral student in Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary research interest is Korea’s occupied cinema under Japan and US, and how its fictional and documentary films before and during the Cold War provide an intriguing intervention of postcoloniality, global film movement, and social imaginary. His forthcoming publications examine the formation of Korean film theory and its praxis by young political filmmakers in the 1980s, as well as the campiness of gender representation in wartime films of U.S., Japan, and colonial Korea. He received MA degrees from Columbia University and UC San Diego.

I am currently teaching documentary and journalism, philosophy of communication, media cultural studies at Department of Television of KARTS.  I am interested in the issues from counter-history and memories, urban spatial theory to trans-Asiatic documentary making among others.  Having directed and produced a few short documentary films on these topics, I am now more focused in doing researches and writing on the related areas.  My role and responsibility in the department is mainly consisted of introducing key concepts and fundamental theories, providing research/writing methods, to the students.  In addition to this, I will do documentary/journalism workshops with the (under)graduate students in and out of the School.  The Asia Young Documentary Coproduction Workshop with the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival is one of them.

Stephen Ranger is a Research Associate at the ECIPE in Brussels and Doctoral Researcher at Center for East Asia Studies, University of Turku in Finland. His background is in Korean studies and he had written articles on the film industry and international politics. Currently he is writing his dissertation on British foreign policy in East Asia in the early twentieth century.

Jimmyn Parc is an associate professor at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Prior to joining the University of Malaya, he was a visiting lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, France and a researcher at the Institute of Communication Research, Seoul National University. He has published numerous academic articles and conducted several research projects related to the competitiveness of organizations, industries, and countries. His current research focuses on cultural industries in Asia and Europe, which includes films and music. Professor Parc is also the co-author of The Untold Story of the Korean Film Industry: A Global Business and Economic Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan in 2021).

Patrick Messerlin is Professor Emeritus at Sciences Po Paris, and Chairman, Steering Committee ECIPE, Brussels. He has written many books, articles, and reports on trade policy and international trade. Since 2013, he has focused on cultural industries and policies, especially the film and music industries. His most recent book is co-authored with Prof. Jimmyn Parc, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and entitled The Untold Story of the Korean Film Industry: A Global Business and Economic Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan in 2021).

Suweon Kim enjoys writing on the role of creative industries and cities in South-South cooperation in light of public diplomacy and development cooperation with a specialization in Afro-Asia relations. Having completed her MSocSc and PhD in Cape Town, South Africa funded by the government of Korea, she went on to teaching at the Accra campus of Webster University. She joined Hankuk University of Foreign Studies faculty as an assistant professor in the department of International Studies at Graduate School of International and Area Studies in 2020.

Award-winning artist, writer, musician, filmmaker and academic based in South Korea. Articles in many journals including the Brooklyn Rail and Canadian Notes and Queries. Have presented to academic conferences in Oxford, Bath, Liverpool, Berlin, Seoul, Osaka, and elsewhere. Selected by festivals in Korea, Ireland, the U.K., the US, China (Hong Kong), Kazakhstan, Australia, Greece, Pakistan, Serbia, Portugal, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and India.

I am Sarah Benazizi, born and raised in Rome, Italy. Since I was young I was surrounded by art and heritage. Being born from a Moroccan father and Italian mother, I was always open to new cultures which led me to study Korean language and culture at La Sapienza University of Rome. After graduation I got the chance to study Cultural heritage in Korea thanks to the Korean government scholarship. II chose this field because I think studying heritage outside of Europe will greatly help me to open my mind on how heritage affects communities depending on the culture and location. For this specific reason this winter I was involved in an internship in the city of Gyeongju, where I assisted in a project related to heritage promotion. Korean art and Asian art is still a niche field in Europe, thus after my studies I wish to come back and work in a museum related to Asian art, so that Europeans can become better world citizens through education.

Alessandra Richetto, born in 1996 and long time animation and pop culture enthusiast, I am now a first year PhD Student in Humanities from Università degli Studi di Torino, curriculum of Semiotics and Media studies, with a project on discourses about the future in animated forms of entertainment. Also professor of History of Animation in Scuola Internazionale di Comics of Turin since September 2022.

Dr. Jae-Eun Oh is an associate professor and program leader for the BA (Hons) in Digital Media at Design School, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received an MFA from the School of TV, Film and Media Department at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and a Ph.D. from Sejong University, South Korea. Her research interests lie primarily in animation storytelling, animation nostalgia, and theme park attractions that adopt animation content to attract visitors. Besides animation-related research, her research demonstrates how to motivate creative media students using studio/project-based learning, where they learn to create their own media artifacts. 

Vincenzo Cicchelli (PHD) is an Associate Professor at the Université de Paris and a Research Fellow at the Centre Population et Développement (CEPED) (Université Paris Cité/Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). He is currently the Director of International Relations at GRIP (Global Research Institute of Paris, Université de Paris): https://u-paris.fr/global-research-institute-paris/en/homepage/ 

At Brill, he is the Editor-in-Chief (with Sylvie Octobre) of the “Global Youth Studies” suite: http://www2.brill.com/gys. 

He is the author of many books and articles, of which the latest are: Youth on Edge. Facing Global Crises in Multicultural French society, London, Palgrave, 2022 (with Sylvie Octobre); K-pop, soft power et culture globale, Paris, PUF, 2022 (with Sylvie Octobre); The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture: Surfing the Korean Wave, London, Palgrave, 2021 (with Sylvie Octobre); Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times, Leiden, Brill, 2020 (with Sylvie Mesure, eds.); Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and Global Culture, Leiden, Brill, 2019 (with Sylvie Octobre and Viviane Riegel, eds.); Aesthetico-Cultural Cosmopolitanism and French Youth: The Taste of the World, London, Palgrave, 2018 (with Sylvie Octobre); Plural and Shared: The Sociology of a Cosmopolitan World, Leiden, Brill, 2018 

Sylvie Octobre (PHD) is a researcher at the Département des études, de la prospective et des statistiques (French Ministry of Culture), and a Research Fellow at Centre Max Weber (ENS Lyon and Université Lumières Lyon 2). 

At Brill, she is the Editor-in-Chief (with Vincenzo Cicchelli) of the “Global Youth Studies” suite: http://www2.brill.com/gys. 

She is the author of many articles and books, of which the latest are: Youth on Edge. Facing Global Crises in Multicultural French society, London, Palgrave, 2022 (with Vincenzo Cicchelli); K-pop, soft power et culture globale, Paris, PUF, 2022 (with Vincenzo Cicchelli); The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture: Surfing the Korean Wave, London, Palgrave, 2021 (with Vincenzo Cicchelli); Youth Technoculture: From Aesthetics to Politics, Leiden, Brill, 2020; Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and Global Culture, Leiden, Brill, 2019 (with Vincenzo Cicchelli and Viviane 

Riegel, eds.); ¿Quién teme a las culturas juveniles? Las culturas juveniles en la era digital, Mexico, Oceano Travesia, 2018; Normes de genre dans les institutions culturelles, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2018 (with Frédérique Patureau);Aesthetico-Cultural Cosmopolitanism and French Youth: The Taste of the World, London, Palgrave, 2018 (with Vincenzo Cicchelli). 

Faye Mercier is a junior lecturer in Television and Cross-Media Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Her research areas include the media industries of Japan and South Korea, and she has previously published on the topics of Japanese reality television, K-Dramas, and K-Pop fandoms. Her forthcoming work explores the platformisation of reality television in South Korea, focusing in particular on the impacts of global television logics on the participants and consumers of Korean reality production. 

Dr. Hatice Çelik is an Associate Professor at the Department of Asian Studies, the Institute for Area Studies, Social Sciences University of Ankara (SSUA), Türkiye. She graduated from the Department of International Relations at Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara. She got her master’s degree in Asian Studies at METU. She was a visiting researcher at the Academy of Korean Studies, South Korea for a six-month period in 2013. She earned her Ph.D. in the Area Studies Ph.D. program with her thesis on South Korea-ASEAN relations at METU. Her research interests include the foreign policy of the Korean peninsula, middle powers, ASEAN, and regionalization in Asia. 

Yusuf Avcı is a lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies at SSUA, Türkiye. He completed his Ph.D. at the School of East Asian Studies at Sheffield University with an ethnographic thesis on asylum seekers in Japan. He works on migration and mobility movements from an anthropological perspective, with a particular focus on Japan and Türkiye. During the fieldwork, he was affiliated with Waseda University as a visiting scholar and conducted participant observations and interviews with asylum seekers and refugees in Tokyo. Before joining SSUA, Dr. Avcı taught courses at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University as an associate tutor. He works on migration and mobility movements from an anthropological perspective, with a particular focus on Japan and Türkiye.

Sıla Selin Türkel is currently a Ph. D. student in Area Studies Ph.D. Program, Institute for Area Studies in SSUA, Türkiye. She completed her master’s degree with her thesis titled “The role of international organizations on disarmament of the Korean Peninsula: The cases of UN and ASEAN”. Her research interests include Korean foreign policy, security and disarmament of South Korea and North Korean studies. 

I have studied Musicology in the University of Oviedo, Spain. Currently, I am working on my PhD dissertation on K-pop and its representation of Latin-ness throughout the 21st century. I receive economic support from the pre-doctoral FPU Governmental Program, and from the research project “Music and audiovisual media in Spain: creation, mediation and negotiation of meanings” [MCI-20-PID2019-106479GB-I00]. 

I have participated in international conferences, such as IASPM XXI (Daegu, South Korea), and the BTS Conference (Seoul, South Korea). I have also published a divulgation article in The Conversation about K-pop’s origin.

Soyoon Park is a doctoral candidate at York St John University, where she also teaches undergraduate Korean modules as a Graduate Research Fellow in School of Education, Language and Psychology. Her research areas are in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, investigating how gender is discursively constructed cross-culturally and how it translates to adult language learners’ gender identity negotiation and performativity in intercultural contexts.

I am a PhD candidate at Leiden University and lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. I have a BA in Korean Studies from Leiden University. As a recipient of a KGSP scholarship, I obtained an MA degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Seoul National University. Taking all my classes in Korean, I have attained full professional fluency in the language. Over the past eight years, I have built personal relationships with idols within the K-pop industry. Their personal stories inspired me to devote my PhD project to their sense of autonomy and authenticity in a highly controlled and manufactured environment.