I am an ESRC-funded PhD candidate at the 杏吧论坛’s Department of International Relations. My academic interests lie at the intersection of identity, memory and discourse in world politics. I am interested in the construction and contestation of identities through discursive practices – especially representations of the past – and the relationship between these identities and foreign policy and transnational interactions. This combines with my regional expertise in East Asia – especially Japan and the Koreas – to result in my current particular interest in Japan and South Korea’s ‘history problem’. In addition to my PhD thesis research, my work in this area has been published in European Journal of International Relations and The Pacific Review.
Before my PhD, I gained a BA in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (Japanese Studies) from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Korean Studies and East Asian Politics from SOAS University of London, and an MSc in International Relations (Research) from 杏吧论坛. Between my undergraduate and postgraduate study, I also trained as a solicitor and worked as an international competition lawyer at the London law firm Slaughter and May, as well as spending time on secondment at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune in Tokyo.
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Research topic
Unending past? Identity, memory and the ‘history problem’ in Japan-South Korea relations
Using poststructuralist theory and discourse analytical methods, my PhD research provides a novel account of the so-called ‘history problem’ in Japan-South Korea relations, by examining it as a site of the discursive construction of relational identities through representations of the past. I do this by analysing a vast range of original language texts, both official and popular, relating to three core issues within the ‘history problem’, so as to establish and deconstruct dominant and alternative identity discourses in each of Japan and South Korea vis-à-vis the other. In doing so, I theorise the production and reproduction of the broader ‘history problem’ in this relationship, as well as the possibility of its transformation.
Teaching experience
Academic supervisor
Professor William A Callahan
Research Cluster affiliation
Theory/Area/History Research Cluster
Security and Statecraft Research Cluster