Considering myself as a critical humanities-informed social science scholar, my research interests fall into three interrelated fields: post-positivist IR theory & post-western IR theorizing, critical & popular geopolitics in East Asia, and Korea studies with a focus on culture and politics.
Against this broad backdrop, I have been involved with a research project entitled ‘Nationalism and Cultures of (In)security in East Asia’. The theme of this project has been to explore the complex dynamics between public discourse, identity and policy in East Asia in the 21st century. In particular, I am interested in understanding how studies of East Asian security practices/policies need to be better conceptualized in International Relations (IR) studies, on the one hand, and how East Asian discourses of (in)security, which produce novel ideas of understanding the de/construction of national and/or regional identity, can inform contemporary IR theory as well as East Asian politics.
My recent project related to the above topic is ‘Indigenous IR Theory Production in Asia’. I find this topic interesting and important in that it involves the interface between domestic and international politics, between scholarship and statecraft, between culture and politics, as Asian academics and officials take national values and promote them on the world stage as IR theory vis-à-vis mainstream Western-centric IR theory. It also reveals the politics of IR knowledge in a post-hegemonic world.