Professor Ju Hui Judy Han, a faculty affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Korea and Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Geography at UTSC, is heading a research lab on the urban geography of religion. This research lab is part of an international research collaboration led by Professor Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany, and funded by a multi-year research grant by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS), entitled “Urban Aspirations in Seoul: Religion and Megacities in Comparative Studies.”

Professor Han’s research lab is funded by generous grant from AKS will help fund research trips, collaborative meetings, conferences and publications to foster ethnographic and comparative research organized around the following themes: 1) Urban geography of religion; 2) urban life, spiritual life; and 3) multiple aspirations.

This project is part of a larger study of urban aspirations, directed by Peter van der Veer and Arjun AppaduraI, which compares four post-colonial Asian megacities – Mumbai, Singapore, Shanghai and Seoul. Megacities constitute constantly transforming arenas for the risk-taking of capital and religion in various instances of spatial contestation. This comparative project understands megacities as a central element in globalization.

The interdisciplinary methodology of this project is reflected through the diverse membership of the research team. Prof. Han is a social/cultural geographer, with interests in religion, race, ethnicity and mobility. A faculty member of the Centre for the Study of Korea at the University of Toronto, Prof. Han has extensively studied the nexus of political economy and cultural politics in Korea and Korean diaspora through the frameworks of cultural geography, post-colonial cultural studies, critical race, sexuality and gender studies. She is joined by these world-renowned scholars for the project:

  • 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

For more information on this interesting research project, please follow:

http://www.mmg.mpg.de/research/all-projects/comparative-study-of-urban-aspirations-in-mega-cities/