Kim Lacey,  who recently defended her dissertation in the History PhD Program, was awarded the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant.

An overview of her recently defended dissertation:

My recently defended dissertation is a transnational social history of the ethnic Korean diaspora in Eurasia, tracing the community's formation and transformation across Russian imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet space. Rather than treating the 1937 mass deportation of Koreans from the Russian Far East as the defining event in this history, I reconstruct the longue durée of a community that emerged at the collision point of competing Japanese and Russian/Soviet imperial projects — caught between rival claims to their labor, land, and allegiance.

Plans and Next Steps

I plan to conduct additional archival research this year that will deepen this transnational, imperial-collision framing and strengthen the early chapters of the book manuscript. This summer also lays the groundwork for my second book project on the multi-ethnic social history of Vladivostok from 1860 to 1930. In the fall, I will be joining the University of Pennsylvania as the Moon Family Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies, where I will continue developing the manuscript and related journal articles.

The American Historical Association offers the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grants to support research in the history of Europe, Africa, and Asia. These annual grants are intended to further research in progress and may be used for travel to a library or archive; microfilming, photography, or photocopying; hiring a researcher; borrowing or access fees; and similar research expenses—a list of purposes that is meant to be merely illustrative, not exhaustive (other expenses, such as childcare, can be included).