Ken Park
Graduate Student
Fields/Specialties
Modern Korean History
Environmental History
Animal History
History of Science and Technology
U.S. and the World in the Cold War
Education
Ph.D. in History, University of Virginia, in progress
B.A. in Asian Studies (Minor, Program in the Environment), University of Michigan, with Highest Distinction, Honors Thesis awarded Highest Honors, 2024
Biography
Ken Park joined the doctoral program in 2025. Working where environmental history, animal history, and science and technology studies meet, he rethinks the making of modern Korea. Where conventional accounts foreground large-scale political and economic change, he attends instead to the movement of materials through everyday life. Tracing the entanglement of animals, infrastructures, and environmental pressures that sustained a rapidly expanding Greater Seoul after 1945, he asks what modernization has meant, and continues to mean.
Awards and Honors
- Travel Support, Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University, 2026
- Conference Travel Grant, Department of History, University of Virginia, 2026
- Summer Research Grant, Department of History, University of Virginia, 2026
- Summer Language Study Grant, Department of History, University of Virginia, 2026
- Ellen Bayard Weedon Travel Grant, East Asia Center, University of Virginia, 2026
- Sang-Yong Nam Award, Nam Center for Korean Studies, University of Michigan, 2024
Courses Taught
- Modern Korean History: One Peninsula, Two Paths (Graduate Teaching Assistant, Spring 2026)