Excellent news! I just found out that a col­lab­o­ra­tive research project that I’m involved with, “Urban Aspirations in Seoul: Religion and Megacities in Comparative Studies,” has been awarded a 5-year US$1.25 mil­lion grant by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). The project is spear­headed by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany, and con­ceived as part of a larger study of urban aspi­ra­tions (co-directors: Peter van der Veer and Arjun Appadurai) that com­pares four Asian post­colo­nial megac­i­ties — Mumbai, Singapore, Shanghai, and now Seoul.

From what we’ve dis­cussed in the process of devel­op­ing this project pro­posal, it looks like the grant will fund research trips, col­lab­o­ra­tive meet­ings, con­fer­ences, and pub­li­ca­tions to fos­ter ethno­graphic and com­par­a­tive research orga­nized around these three themes: 1) Urban geog­ra­phy of reli­gion; 2) Urban life, spritual life; and 3) Multiple aspirations.

I’ll be in great com­pany, for sure:

• Peter VAN DER VEER (Max Planck Institute), a renowned anthro­pol­o­gist of reli­gion and nationalism
• Jin-heon JUNG (Max Planck Institute), cul­tural anthro­pol­o­gist of North Korean migra­tion and South Korean Protestantism
• Nicholas HARKNESS (Harvard University), lin­guis­tic anthro­pol­o­gist and ethno­g­ra­pher of Korean Christianity
• SONG Do-young (Hanyang University), cul­tural anthro­pol­o­gist of the city, with exper­tise in North Africa, Islam, and cul­tural geog­ra­phy of Seoul
• KIM Hyun Mee (Yonsei University), cul­tural anthro­pol­o­gist of gen­der and migra­tion, mar­riage and religion
• And me, the lone geo­g­ra­pher with inter­ests in cul­tural pol­i­tics of reli­gion, dif­fer­ence, and mobility

I’m incred­i­bly hon­oured and excited to be part of this amaz­ing inter­na­tional col­lab­o­ra­tion, and look for­ward to shar­ing more updates and devel­op­ments here.