Korea(n)' as a medium to explore new scientific knowledge: On the Beginning of Neuroscience in South Korea in the 1970s-1980s

The STS Lab and the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne & the NeuroGenderings (NG) network are pleased to present the 2024 edition of the NG Lecture Series dedicated to discussing the science and politics of race in brain research and the scientific contributions in/from the Global South and the Global East.

Friday, August 16t^h, 2024 : Zoom Talk
3pm CEST (Swiss Time)/10pm KST (Korean Time).

This talk shows how the notion of ‘Korea(n)’ itself served as a productive medium in promoting and establishing the field of neuroscience in South Korea from the 1970s. Though neuroscience began to be institutionalized in the early 1960s, it did not suddenly become a global endeavor. Only when it met the needs and interests of local stakeholders, a fertile ground was formed in each country in producing neuroscientific knowledge. This talk addresses that the concept, like Korea(n), played a productive role, both at the intellectual and institutional level, in configuring the production of neuroscientific knowledge in South Korea. By showing the way Chan-Woong Park - the first president of the Korean Society for Neuroscience - had regarded and positioned the concept of Korea(n) in interdisciplinary neuroscience, this talk reveals a distinctive context in which a particular understanding of Korea(n) led to the intellectual and institutional diversity in neuroscience in the late 20th century. 

Bio: Youjung Shin is an assistant professor in the Department of Science Studies at Jeonbuk National University in South Korea. She works on the transnational development of brain sciences and its circulation via data, drugs, and policies in the late twentieth century. Her work has been published in the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, History of the Human Sciences, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, among other places.

Discussants: Jaehwan Hyun, Institute of Liberal Education, Pusan National University, South Korea, & Oliver Rollins, American Ethnic Studies and Faculty in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Washington, U.S.A.

Organizer and Chair: Cynthia Kraus, University of Lausanne & NG board member.

Sponsors: STS Lab & ISS, University of Lausanne, NG Network.