Keynote Lectures

Heonik Kwon has done fieldwork both in a small-scale indigenous society (among nomadic reindeer hunter-herders in Far East Siberia, during the last years of the Soviet order) and in places of large-scale historical upheavals such as the postwar central Vietnam. Serving as a Senior Research Fellow in Social Science and Distinguished Professor of Social Anthropology at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, he is also part of the Mega-Asia research group at Seoul National University Asia Center. A Fellow of the British Academy, Kwon’s previous books include: Ghosts of War in Vietnam (2008, winner of Kahin Prize), The Other Cold War (2010), After the Korean War: An Intimate History (2020, Palais Prize), and Spirit Power: Politics and Religion in Korea’s American Century (2022, co-authored with Jun Hwan Park). He is now completing a book on Korean War memories in global spectrum.

A former professor at the Université Paris Diderot, François Jullien is one of the most influential figures in contemporary French philosophy. His work lies at the crux of sinology and general philosophy. Grounded in ancient Chinese Studies, Neo-Confucianism, and the literary and aesthetic concepts of classical China, it questions the history and categories of European reason by creating a perspective between cultures. By dint of this detour through China, the work of François Jullien has thus opened up productive yet exacting pathways to think interculturality.