The Oxford Centre for Korean Studies (OCKS)
The Oxford Centre for Korean Studies
The Oxford Centre for Korean Studies (OCKS), based within the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford, is an interdisciplinary hub for research, teaching, and public engagement on Korea and contemporary Korean culture (Hallyu). Responding to growing international interest in Korea and K-culture, the Centre brings together scholars, students, artists, filmmakers, and practitioners working across Korean language, linguistics, literature, history, film, media, society, politics, and the creative industries.
Why have Korean music, food, beauty, drama, film, and digital culture become so influential worldwide? OCKS aims to explore these questions through interdisciplinary Hallyu research while also actively creating new K-cultural content and creative collaborations.
As Oxford’s first dedicated centre for Korean Studies, OCKS seeks to serve as a bridge between South Korea, Oxford and the wider international community, connecting researchers, students, cultural organisations, and industry partners. The Centre will conduct research across Humanities and Social Sciences while also developing documentaries, films, translation initiatives, exhibitions, workshops, performances, and other public-facing cultural projects.
Through research, education, and creative partnership, OCKS aims to foster deeper understanding of Korea’s culture, history, society, language and contemporary global presence, while contributing to the future development of Korean Studies and K-culture.
People
Prof Jieun Kiaer
YBM KF Professor of Korean Linguistics, Fellow of Hertford College, Director
Prof Jay Lewis
Professor of Korean History; Fellow of Wolfson College
Dr Hark-Joon Lee
Korea Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Deputy Director
Dr Young-Hae Chi
Lecturer in Korean Language
Dr Simon Barnes-Sadler
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Dr C W Winter
Dr. C.W. Winter is an award-winning filmmaker who won the Golden Bear in the Encounters section at the Berlin International Film Festival. He is currently working with Professor Jieun Kiaer on a film about the Haenyeo women of Jeju.
Dr Loli Kim
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Alfred W.T. Lo
DPhil researcher
Joohyun Song
DPhil researcher
Research
Professor Jieun Kiaer and her research group have published extensively on Hallyu and Korean culture in English and serves as Series Editor for The Korean Wave in Translation (2024–Present) and Routledge Studies in East Asian Translation (2018–Present) at Routledge.
2. Korean Words in English: Oxford English Dictionary
A research project exploring Korean words in English and the evolving interaction between the Korean and English languages through cultural exchange and global communication.
3. The Leverhulme Research Project Grants (2022-2025)
Sea, song and survival: the language and folklore of the haenyeo women
5. Hallyu South Korea Studies Programme
(Site to be included / under construction)
6. Hallyu Korean International Forum
Korean is no longer spoken only on the Korean Peninsula or within Korean diaspora communities. Through the global rise of K-culture, Korean is now being learned, used, and reshaped by people all around the world. Like English, Korean is becoming an increasingly global, diverse, and transnational language.
7. Annual “Why K-?” Symposium
The first “Why K-?” Symposium, Why Korean Food?, will explore the philosophy of Korean cuisine beyond taste alone, focusing on ideas of care, harmony, community, and wellbeing. The symposium will revisit the culinary wisdom of eighteenth-century Korean writer and food scholar Yi Bingheogak and Seo Yugu, whose works reveal the deep relationship between food, everyday life, and human flourishing.
* The event will conclude with a special hands-on kimchi-making workshop.
News
Evidence on the future funding of the BBC World Service
Professor Jieun Kiaer highlighted the BBC World Service’s importance as a global source of accurate and independent journalism, emphasising its role in promoting democratic values, combating misinformation, and strengthening the UK’s international soft power.
'From BTS to Squid Game: How South Korea Became a Cultural Juggernaut'
'This Journalist Didn't Just Interview North Korean Defectors, He Followed Them On Their Escape'
K-pop haters will completely shift their paradigm after watching the documentary
