USC Dornsife's Korean Studies Institute (KSI) announced today a new interdisciplinary predoctoral exchange that builds on the university's emerging position as a global leader in American international relations focused on East Asia.
KSI will offer a year-long program to young scholars working to earn their Ph.D.s in fields such as international relations and history at colleges and universities across the country. The initiative expands USC Dornsife's already vibrant mentorship program, where a wide variety of graduate students from across the social sciences and humanities focus on US-East Asia relations. The expansion is made possible by a $1.2 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.
"This grant will provide valuable support to our tremendous group of scholars working on issues related to the Pacific Rim, said Andrew Lakoff, Divisional Dean of Social Sciences for USC Dornsife. "We are confident that this initiative and the research undertaken at KSI will have a direct and important impact on US-East Asian relations and will enable the program to grow to meet the need for new answers that address emerging challenges."
The initiative will be headed by KSI Director and social scientist David Kang, in collaboration with Jonathan Markowitz, an assistant professor in the USC Dornsife School of International Relations.
Each annual cohort will have the opportunity to regularly interact about research and scholarship and will receive mentoring on professionalization and public engagement. The program will host conferences, workshops and other similar programmatic activities related to the mission of the center and scope of the grant. In addition, KSI will organize and host a set of academic talks designed to publicize the center's research.
"The program is poised to become one of the leading sources of insight about the US-East Asia and US-Korean relations," said Kang, the Maria Crutcher Professor of International Relations, Business, and East Asian Languages and Cultures. "It's innovative and badly needed, so we are tremendously grateful to the Charles Koch Foundation for its support. As the security environment for the United States and East Asia continues to change, we need to develop and nurture scholars who have deep knowledge of the region and who care about policy issues."
The Charles Koch Foundation supports research and educational programs in areas such as criminal justice and policing reform, free expression, foreign policy, economic opportunity and innovation. The Foundation supports more than 300 colleges and universities across the country, including UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Notre Dame.
"The national conversation on foreign policy benefits when additional scholars from diverse disciplines engage," said Charles Koch Foundation Executive Vice President Ryan Stowers. "We're excited to continue supporting USC's Korean Studies Institute as its researchers enhance understanding of the security environment with East Asia and expand opportunities for others to contribute."
Kang, who has been at USC Dornsife since 2009, studies East Asian security with a particular emphasis on the Korean peninsula. For the decade prior, he taught at Dartmouth and the Tuck School of Business. He has written on the economic development of Korea and the Philippines, the international relations of historical East Asia, North Korea. His most recent book is American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the 21st Century. Earlier grants to Kang have included funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Korea Foundation and the Academy of Korean Studies.
Jonathan Markowitz is a leading authority on resource competition and has researched extensively territorial disputes in the South China Seas and emerging competition over the Arctic Ocean. He is finishing a book entitled the Perils of Plenty: Arctic Resource Competition and the Return of the Great Game.
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Additional private support will be needed to sustain the predoctoral program in US-Asia relations. For more information, please contact Associate Director Gloria Koo at gloriako@usc.edu or (213) 740-0005.