Sophie Bowman

PhD Candidate
Robarts Library

Campus

Areas of Interest

  • modern Korean literature
  • women's writing
  • gender critique
  • intersectional feminism
  • everyday life
  • translation

Biography

My research project examines the contradictions and ambiguities that surrounded urban, educated women in 1950s South Korea. Focusing on fiction by women authors, my dissertation narrates literary interventions into the gender politics of the post-Korean War period, and highlights the throughgoing social critiques articulated in works formerly dismissed as middlebrow or apolitical. I am also an active translator. My published translations include Kim Bo-young's I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories (2021, co-translation with Sung Ryu) and A Plagued Sea (2026)

Awards:

Korea Foundation Scholarship for Graduate Studies (2024-2025)

Canada Graduate Scholarship (2019-2023)

Korean Literature Translation Fellowship (2015-2017)

Korea Times Translation Award (2015)

Education

MA, Korean Language and Literature, Ewha Women's University
MA, Korean Studies, SOAS, University of London
BA, Social Anthropology, SOAS, University of London