Many perspectives
History, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology and political science meet in a single module.
Collaborative teaching
Nordic-Baltic Korean Studies Days
What happens when students and teachers from small Korean Studies environments meet in one place? For an intensive week, separate classrooms become a shared learning community, with space for history, politics, film, popular culture, language and everyday life.
A module built through cooperation
Nordic-Baltic Korean Studies Days brings together universities across the Nordic and Baltic region. The module combines disciplinary breadth with practical formats, including workshops, roundtables and focused training activities. Students meet peers who share their interests, while teachers can connect specialised expertise that would be difficult for any one institution to offer alone.
Active learning
Workshops and training sessions invite students to make, discuss and test ideas rather than only listen.
A wider community
The module helps students see themselves as part of a regional Korean Studies network.
Why the format works
The intensity is part of the appeal. A concentrated week creates momentum and gives conversations time to develop across sessions. Students can move from a lecture on history to a workshop on media or popular culture, finding connections that a conventional module structure might keep apart.
Participant responses highlighted the variety of topics, the opportunity to learn from specialists and the sense of joining a broader academic community. That combination of intellectual range and social connection is central to the project.
My contribution
As the NTNU representative, I contribute teaching on Korean cinema, popular culture, queerness and cultural politics. My aim is to make close analysis approachable and to connect films, performances and media texts to larger questions about identity, memory and social change.
The best collaborative teaching does more than add extra lectures. It changes the room: students hear unfamiliar approaches, teachers learn from one another and the subject becomes larger than any single syllabus.