Charles University Prague is hosting an online EPEL lecture on 16 April 2026. All are welcome to join.

Speaker: Jan Creutzenberg

Topic: The Seoul Drama Center: Korean Theatre from the Cold War to Covid

Date: 16 April 2026, 12:30 PM CET

Join via Zoom: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/98860164617?pwd=nqrraEqKsikdY27YPrA8AFKKhSlKRZ.1

Meeting ID: 988 6016 4617 Passcode: 277507

Professor Kenneth Wells participated in the AKSE conference in Prague in 1995 and was a friend to many in the European Korean Studies community. We were saddened to learn of his passing on 30 March in New Zealand, and share the following obituary written by Dr. Gregory N. Evon (UNSW Sydney).

Dear Members of the Korean Studies Community,

I write to inform you that one of the leading figures in Korean Studies, Professor Kenneth Wells, passed away on 30 March in New Zealand.

I first met Ken in September 1986, when I began studying at Indiana University, Bloomington. I had little desire “to go to college,” as they say in the US, and was set on joining the Air Force, like some of my older friends. In the end, parental pressure (“you must go to college!”) won out over peer influence. In July 1986, my father took me to the induction process at Indiana University, which included looking at possible courses. I vividly remember walking through Franklin Hall until I came to the board for East Asian Studies. One of the options was a level one Korean language class, and I figured “why not?” It seemed at least reasonably appropriate since (1) I had no idea what to study and (2) by then had spent most of my high school years doing Hapkido. Little did I know what a pivotal decision that was.

My very first college course was on a Monday at 9:00 a.m. at Ballantine Hall. It was also Ken’s first in the US. There were roughly twenty students, and we were all chatting when this white guy with a beard walked in and introduced himself. We understood that he was our Korean language teacher, but otherwise we were mystified at the most elemental thing: his name. Finally, Ken wrote “Wells” on the blackboard, thus making clear to us that his name was not “Wurz.” That was our introduction to the peculiarities of vowels in New Zealand English, and so we got a bit of New Zealand English tossed in with Korean.

The students adapted well, but pronunciation is one thing and expressions another. Disaster struck in the lead-up to the Thanksgiving break, after which we were to take a major exam. Ken ended the class by asking if we had any “burning questions.” There were two problems here. First, none of us had ever heard the expression before. Second, there was the vowel problem. The entire class went silent, and Ken knew something was wrong but had no idea exactly what was going on. Finally, an older student raised his hand and asked, “Professor, I don’t want to be rude, but why are you talking about burning Christians?” Over those previous weeks, Ken was serious, but at that moment, we got to see that he had a quirky sense of humour and that when he laughed, he laughed hard. And so to the blackboard he went, spelling out “questions,” as he and all of us students howled with laughter.

The mix of students was atypical compared to the average college classroom. There were the eighteen-year-old freshmen like me, but also older students—usually, but not always male—who had been in the military and stationed in South Korea. This led to a curious imbalance when Ken, in something of a tradition during his time at Indiana University, invited the students to his home for a party featuring Korean food prepared by wife, Young-Oak. The more worldly among us knew what was what and were delighted. The rest, like me, were a bit more cautious. I remember my initial scepticism over kimchi (it did not last long) and wonderment that a people who had created that had also created a delectable dish called chapch’ae.

A few years later, Ken and his family moved to the outskirts of town, to a home with a paddock. The annual parties shifted there. And there, too, Ken brought a bit of New Zealand to southern Indiana by acquiring sheep, including a big ram that his kids appropriately named “Lambo.” This venture had its own hilarities. At one point, Ken and a professor friend drove to Kentucky to pick up a lamb to add to the flock, bringing it back in the backseat of a beat-up Datsun. Funny enough, but they also stopped at a bar to get a bite to eat and a beer on the trip and shocked the Kentucky locals by asking if they had Fosters. I remember hearing this story and thinking “are you crazy?” Since my father was a prosecutor, I had it drummed into my head since I was a little kid that one of the most dangerous things you can do is to go into a bar that you don’t know in a place that you don’t know.

In that sense, Ken could be quite innocent, although one was not always sure where the innocence ended and the quirky sense of humour began. The sheep farm provided a prime example of this conundrum in the form of an annoying neighbour (a lawyer, no less, as I recall) and his unruly German Shepherd that kept harassing Ken’s sheep. A normal American (and as anyone who knew Ken knows all too well, he was not American, normal or otherwise) would have shot the dog. Not Ken. Instead, he kidnapped the dog after catching it lurking about the paddock (apparently, the hound was quite nice when not harassing the sheep) and took care of it for a considerable period (carefully informing the owner of the ever-rising food bill). Eventually, a truce was reached, and a Hatfield-McCoy feud was avoided.

Several years after receiving tenure at Indiana, Ken took a job at The Australian National University in 1994. By that point, his pathbreaking work, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937 (University of Hawaii Press, 1991), had been published and his edited volume, South Korea’s Minjung Movement: The Culture and Politics of Dissidence (University of Hawaii Press, 1995), was in press. Ken quickly established himself as a leader and advocate for Korean Studies in Australasia as the founding president of the Korean Studies Association of Australasia in 1994 as well as the head of the ANU’s Centre for Korean Studies. I was fortunate to receive a scholarship from the ANU and went there in 1995 to continue my PhD under Ken’s supervision. I saw much of that effort on his part up close, and in 2003, Ken received much-deserved recognition when he was appointed the endowed Korea Foundation Professor of Korean History at the ANU.

In 2009, Ken embarked on a new adventure when he took a position teaching Korean history at Berkeley for three years. Although most who knew Ken think of his passion for mountaineering (not hiking, but serious mountain climbing), he also was a bit of a car enthusiast, and I recall a photo of him next to a bright yellow Ford Mustang that he rented for a trip down the California Pacific Coast Highway.

After Ken’s California adventure, he retired to New Zealand with his wife and set up a hazelnut farm. But he also remained an active scholar and travelled worldwide to give talks and did not exactly retire in any conventional sense. He was a Research Fellow at the New Zealand Asia Institute and an Adjunct Professor of history at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he also occasionally taught. Over this time, he worked on his fine study, Korea: Outline of a Civilisation (Brill, 2015), as well as another project that he and his wife worked on for nearly two decades: a biography of her uncle, who ended up in the Soviet Union after the Korean War, entitled Too Fast, Too Slow (Seoul: SeodoAD [서도출판사], Feb. 2026).

It is gratifying to know that Ken received copies of the biography in the final weeks of his life. In one of our last conversations, he told me that he was reading the book by a fire. “Any typos?” “Nope, they did a good job,” he replied with a chuckle.

For those who are interested, the family asks that in lieu of flowers, a charitable donation in Ken’s name be made to Hinewai Nature Reserve; donation details are on their homepage (https://www.hinewai.org.nz/ ).

Those who would like to send condolences to the family may do so at Young-Oak Wells 380 Ashley Gorge Road, RD1 Oxford 7495, New Zealand.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gregory N. Evon

History and Area Studies

School of Humanities & Languages

ARTS, DESIGN, and ARCHITECTURE

UNSW SYDNEY, NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

email: g.evon@unsw.edu.au

Eligibility
Graduate Studies: M.A. or Ph.D. students currently enrolled in graduate programs at a university outside Korea and focusing on a Korea-related topic in the humanities, social sciences, arts and cultural studies, media and communications, or contemporary Korea.

Postdoctoral Research: Scholars who have recently obtained a Ph.D. in the humanities, social sciences, arts and cultural studies, media and communications, contemporary Korea, or another relevant field with a Korea-related research topic.
Important: Applicants must hold citizenship or permanent residency status in a country outside Korea as of March 2026.

Applicants must hold citizenship or permanent residency status in a country outside of Korea as of March 2026.

Details

Graduate Studies
Period:
Europe: 1 September 2026 – 31 August 2027
Japan: 1 April 2026 – 31 March 2027

Grant:
Amount varies depending on the country

Postdoctoral Research
Period:
One year starting from either the 2026 Fall semester or the 2027 Spring semester

Grant:
Research stipend and fees associated with editing and publishing

Schedule

Application Submission: 9 March 2026 – 10 April 2026 (18:00 KST)
Notification of Results: June 2026

How to Apply

Applications should be submitted through the KF Application Portal: http://apply.kf.or.kr

Inquiries

KF Fellowships Department:

scholarship@kf.or.kr

]]> https://www.koreanstudies.eu/call-for-papers-the-return-of-the-pre-digital-world-digitally-mediated-nostalgia-in-korea-august-27-28-2026-deadline-15-april-2026/ Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:11:11 +0000 https://www.koreanstudies.eu/?p=9624 The Return of the Pre-Digital World? Digitally Mediated Nostalgia in Korea
August 27–28, 2026 | Olomouc, Czech Republic

Bologna, Italy
18–19 May 2026

The Asia Institute at the University of Bologna and the Korea Institute for National Unification, in collaboration with the Ministry of Unification of the Republic of Korea, will host an international academic conference on 18–19 May 2026 in Bologna, Italy.

This conference aims to examine the evolving prospects for peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula and their implications for regional and international security. Amid shifting great-power relations, prolonged stalemate in inter-Korean relations, and growing uncertainty surrounding deterrence, diplomacy, and alliance politics, the Korean Peninsula remains a critical site for reassessing concepts of peace, coexistence, and security in the 21st century.

We invite scholars and practitioners to submit original papers that engage with questions related to peaceful coexistence, conflict management, and security on the Korean Peninsula, broadly defined.

Possible Themes

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Concepts and models of peaceful coexistence in divided or post-conflict societies;
• Inter-Korean relations and prospects for coexistence short of unification;
• Nuclear deterrence, arms control, and strategic stability on the Peninsula;
• US–ROK alliance, China, Japan, Russia, and great-power dynamics;
• The Korean Peninsula and the evolving international security order;
• The Korean Peninsula and its implications for European and Euro-Atlantic security;
• International law, peace regimes, and confidence-building measures;
• Public opinion, identity, and domestic constraints on peace initiatives.

Submission Guidelines

Participants are invited to submit an abstract of approximately 300 words, clearly outlining the research question, methodology, and contribution. Accepted presenters will be expected to submit a working paper in advance of the conference.

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 8 March 2026
• Notification of Acceptance: 20 March 2026
• Full Paper Deadline: 8 May 2026
• Submission: Please send abstracts to asiainstitute@unibo.it

Participant Provisions

• Accommodation: All presenters will be provided with three nights of accommodation in Bologna.
• Catering: All lunches and dinners during the conference will be hosted by the organizers.
• Travel: Participants are responsible for their own airfare.

Further details regarding publication plans will be announced in due course.

The conference organizers welcome contributions from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including political science, international relations, security studies, law, economics, sociology, and related fields. Early-career scholars are especially encouraged to apply.

Korea as Method

The SNU Institute for Contemporary Korean Studies is pleased to announce the 2026 Annual International Conference, to be held at Seoul National University in the summer of 2026. Building on the continued success of this conference series, the event aims to provide a vibrant interdisciplinary forum for critical scholarship on Korea and beyond.

This year’s theme, Korea as Method, invites participants to move beyond treating Korea merely as an empirical case or regional object of study. Instead, the conference proposes Korea as a methodological, theoretical, and epistemic lens through which broader social, political, economic, cultural, and historical configurations and relations can be rethought and rearticulated.

The notion of “Korea as Method” raises several critical questions: How can Korea serve not only as an object of analysis but also as a source of concepts, comparisons, and critiques? What kinds of theoretical insights emerge when Korean historical experiences—such as colonization and division, developmentalism and democratization, authoritarianism and social movements, as well as the global circulation of Korean popular culture in the context of digital transformation—are taken seriously as generative sites of knowledge production? How might Korean cases unsettle dominant theoretical frameworks or contribute to alternative ways of understanding modernity, capitalism, democracy, statehood, identity, and culture?

By foregrounding Korea as a methodological vantage point, this conference seeks to foster conversations that are both grounded in Korean realities and oriented toward broader comparative and global debates. We particularly encourage contributions that reflect on methodological innovation, theoretical translation, comparative strategies, and epistemic reflexivity in contemporary Korean studies.

We welcome submissions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Korea as a site of theory-building and conceptual innovation
• Methodological reflections in Korean studies: comparison, translation, and contextualization
• Rethinking modernity, capitalism, and development through Korean experiences
• Democracy, authoritarianism, and political transformation in comparative perspective
• State, citizenship, and governance in and beyond Korea
• Korean social movements, labor, and civil society as comparative reference points
• Gender, family, and reproduction in Korea as global questions
• Religion, spirituality, and ethics in Korean contexts
• Cultural production, media, and popular culture as analytical lenses
• Digitalization, platform economies, and technological change in Korea
• Epistemological debates in area studies and global knowledge production

Other themes relevant to contemporary Korean studies are also welcome.

Language

The official languages of the conference are English and Korean. Abstracts must be submitted in English. Interpretation services will be available during the conference as needed.

Live Streaming and Recording
The conference proceedings will be recorded for archival purposes and may be made available on the Institute’s website. Selected sessions may also be live-streamed via YouTube. If you prefer not to be recorded or included in the live stream, please indicate this in your submission.

Registration Fee

There is no registration fee for this conference. Limited financial support may be available for graduate student presenters.

Submission Types

• Individual Papers: 15-20 minute presentations
• Panels: 3-5 papers plus a discussant and a chair

Word Limits

• Panel abstracts: 250 words (accompanied by 3-5 individual paper abstracts of 200 words each and short bios of the presenters)
• Paper abstracts: 200 words (accompanied by a short bio of the presenter; only one paper presentation is allowed per person)

Submission Deadline

Please submit panel and paper abstracts by March 10, 2026, to the following email address: snucks2026@gmail.com

The program committee will notify applicants of acceptance decisions by April 5, 2026.

For further information or inquiries, please contact the organizing committee at the same email address. We look forward to receiving your submissions and to welcoming scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives to the conference.

* Please note that the CKS website is currently under construction. If you experience difficulty accessing the main site (https://cks.snu.ac.kr/), please use the temporary address (http://snuresearch.nineonelabs.co.kr/).