Research

Independent Research

Refugee, migration, language, democracy | Oct 2024 - Present

Since Fall 2024, I began to interview North Korean refugee participants living in America as a final course project. Preliminary analysis of the data reveal interesting notions of subjectivity and practices of translingualism. I am going to embark on multi-sited, longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork to understand more about their identity formation, citizen-making process, socialization to democracy which happens in and through language.

Emerging affect of translanguaging: From sociomaterial perspective | Mar 2023 - Present

As I began to learn about translanguaging and sociomaterial perspective, I began to wonder how North Korean refugee students, often indexed as deficient, could voice themselves in the classroom where translanguaging was encouraged and their identity and past experience was valued. I analyzed my classroom data  from Deleuze and Gattari (1987)’s concept of smooth and striated space to see how materiality of technologies create unintended learning moment.

Critical discourse analysis of North Korean refugee students' representation in news media |  Mar 2024 - Present

Together with my classmate, we analyzed news articles addressing the alternative schools for North Korean refugee students. We read many policy documents and previous research articles that talk about these alternative schools to understand the way the school and people involved in the school were represented. We read critical discourse analytical frameworks within CDA including van Dijik, Fairclough, and van Leeuwen. We thought van Leeuwen's framework explained social actors involved in the alternative school, and began to analyze fron that perspective. We are currently writing the paper.

Multilingual identity in digital storytelling | Dec 2022 - July 2024

As a independent researcher having a great interest in developing inclusive and empowering pedagogy for North Korean refugee's English language learning in South Korea, I began to research the potential of multiliteracies. After reading the previous resesarch articles of critical pedagogies, I got an IRB permission from Seoul National University and began to do action-research at two alternatives school for North Korean refugee students living in Seoul. Each data was analyzed from different theoretical background with former from Rose's (2007) sites of visual meaning-making structure, and the latter from multimodal analytical framework adopted by Kim et al. (2021) and emotional coding scheme from Hillman et al. (2023). I wish to further analyze the data again from a different theoretical orientation, especially from translingualism (Canagarajah, 2013). 

Research assistant experience

Linguistic landscape in South Korean universities | July 2024

As a graduate assistant, I transcribed nearly 30 interview data by university workers, international students, domestic students, and retail owners. They talked about their perception of language-related policies, ideologies and experiences. The data included Korean and English. 

Language ideology in South Korea | May 2024

As a graduate assistant, I transcribed interview data of language researchers in South Korea. They talked about language ideologies prevalent in Korea, that are often monolingual-oriented and non inclusive of other languages. 

Living abroad experience of Korean mothers for their children's education | Feb 2024

As a graduate assistant, I reviewed IRB protocol before submitting for the IRB board's review. The project was to interview and observe Korean mothers who lived or choose to live abroad every vacation for their children's education. 

Critical perspective towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) | Jan 2024

As a graduate assistant, I transcribed the 5 sessions of conference on critical AI between scholars in Seoul National University. They pointed out the limit of viewing AI only from instrumental perspective and suggested to explore AI from ethical and critical stance. The trascribed data laid foundation for further research on how to incorporate critical perspective on AI in their teaching.

Eye-tracking methodology for applied linguistics | Nov 2023 - Feb 2024

I assisted in organizing eye-tracking methodology sessions designed to support qualitative research in applied linguistics. My role included verifying the functionality and accuracy of a preliminary Python program developed for implementing eye-tracking methods.

Education for underachieving students | Nov 2023

As a graduate assistant, I synthesized previous literatures on underachieving students.