My research interests are in the areas of SLA(second language acquisition) and Korean language pedagogy with a special interest in identity, learning experience, and metacognition. My dissertation explored the identity negotiation of Korean Study major female students in the Netherlands. This study provided an in-depth narrative inquiry, which revealed that how the students mirrored themselves through the other's eyes and how to reconstruct their identity through the journey of learning Korean in the Netherlands and study abroad in Korea. Along with SAL identity theories, Dialogism by Bakhtin was adopted as a main theoretical framework, which viewed language as comprising dynamic constellations of sociocultural resources that are fundamentally tied to their social and historical contexts. During the pandemic, I worked on how to promote self-regulation and metacognitive awareness in Korean language online learning.

I teach KOR201/202 'Intermediate Korean' at Wellesley College. Before I joined Wellesley College, I taught Korean1.1, 1.2, 2.1 at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Korea 1, Korean 4 at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. It has been a grateful experience to work with diverse student, faculty, and staff in each country. Besides working in higher education, I served as a Korean language teacher for young heritage learners and as a headteacher of a Korean school in Edinburgh, UK and Pasadena, USA. As a language teacher, my aim is to help learners expand their language repertoire successfully and enrich their life with using Korean appropriately across virtual and real spaces. 

Apart from teaching at Wellesley College, I currently serve in teaching young heritage learners at New England Korean School. It gives me not only a different pedagogical angle towards Korean language teaching but also an opportunity to explore the Korean migrant community and their language use. I also have a special interest in Korean international Adoptees and their language experience. Moreover, I am a member of New England Association of College Korean Educators (NEACKE), American Association of Teachers of Korean (AATK), The International Association for Korean Language Education (IAKLE), The Korean Society for the Study of Anthropology of Education, and Field Studies in Korean Language Education.

I love spending time with my family(husband  & two boys), traveling, baking, listening to classical music, walking, and playing the piano.