CESSI
Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute

CESSI Lecture: Elise Ahn

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@ 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm

July 23, 2020 @ 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

Join us for a lecture with Elise Ahn, Director of the International Projects Office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Link: https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/9eedf68038a34b2aa296dc45df54b36b
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Lecture Description:
  • There has been a substantial body of work exploring the lives of different Korean diasporas in the US (Abelmann, 1995, 1996, 2003, 2009; Choi, 2012), China (Gao, 2010). Kazakhstani historians like German Kim have prolifically produced historiographical works on Soviet and Central Asian Koreans (Kim, 1993, 2003a, 2003b, 2005, 2009a, 2009b).
  • However, the collective memories of Central Asian Koreans have not been fully explored, particularly in connection to notions of “homeland” and identity.
  • This lecture explores the linkages between participants’ family histories regarding the Korean deportation, notions of historic homeland, and participant identities regarding their “Korean-ness” through ethnographic interviews.
  • The interview questions were based on a study looking at the lived experiences of other diasporic communities in Kazakhstan (Li Wei, 2016; Smagulova, 2016). The broader study explores questions related to issues of social mobility, socio-economic access, and identity construction among ethnolinguistic minorities in Kazakhstan.
About Elise Ahn:
  • Elise S. Ahn is the Director of the International Projects Office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an adjunct lecturer at Edgewood College, where she teaches research methods and the internationalization of higher education in their Doctor of Education program.
  • She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in 2011 in Education Policy Studies with a concentration on Global Studies in Education and a methodological specialization in Program Evaluation.
  • During her graduate studies, she was also a Fulbright-Schuman awardee to the European Union (Tilburg University) and the recipient of multiple Title VI grants for Turkish language study.
  • Before coming to UW–Madison, Elise worked at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) as an assistant professor and director of a master degree program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
  • Her research interests focus on the intersection of space, structures, and scale in examining the effects of internationalization in education and language policy production processes.
  • She is also interested in issues related to language, education and equity/access with a focus on urban contexts. She co-edited Language Change in Central Asia (with Juldyz Smagulova), which was published in 2016 and is co-editing a forthcoming special issue of World Englishes examining English in Central Asia.