Juwon Kim

PhD Candidate
jwn.kim@mail.utoronto.ca

Campus

  • Downtown Toronto (St. George)

Areas of Interest

  • Transpacific cold war studies
  • critical race and gender studies
  • cultural history of modern and contemporary Koreas
  • film and media studies
  • decolonization and postcolonial theory

Biography

Juwon Kim (she/her) is a Ph.D. Candidate in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Drawing from critical race and gender studies, postcolonial studies, transpacific studies, and visual media studies, her dissertation tracks the proliferation of racial discourses and practices in and across what became South Korea and the Korean diaspora between the 1940s and the 1970s. Her essay on the question of racial “mixture” across colonial and postcolonial Korea is forthcoming in Verge: Studies in Global Asias (Spring 2026).

Awards/distinctions (selected):

  • Scholarship for Graduate Studies in North America, Korea Foundation (2025–26)
  • Doctoral Completion Award, Department of East Asian Studies (2025–26)
  • Honorable Mention, Best Graduate Student Paper Prize (Korea and/or Japan), Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (2025)
  • Korea Foundation Fellowship, Center for the Study of Korea, University of Toronto (2020–25)
  • Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students, University of Toronto (2020–25)
  • Kyujanggak Junior Fellowship, Seoul National University (2023–24)
  • SGS Research Travel Grant, School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto (2023–24)
  • Honorable Mention, Joseph Fletcher Memorial Award for A.M. Thesis, Regional Studies – East Asia, Harvard University (2020)
  • Full Tuition Grant & Min Young-Chul Memorial Fund, Korea Institute, Harvard University (2018–20)

    Education

    Ph.D., University of Toronto, East Asian Studies (2020–present)
    A.M., Harvard University, Regional Studies – East Asia
    B.A., Columbia University, East Asian Studies, cum laude