- KRW 1.56 billion in funding over 6 years… Exploring the future of humanities in the digital ecosystem

Humanities Research Institute Incheon National University (Director: Professor Kim Jeong-kyung, Department of Korean Language and Literature) has been finally selected for the 2025 Humanities and Social Sciences Research Institute Support Program by the National Research Foundation of Korea.

The research project title is “Affect, Subject and Knowledge/Ethics Formation in Digital Ecologies,” and the institute will receive a total of KRW 1.56 billion in support over six years from 2025 to 2031.

The Humanities Research Institute plans to investigate the process by which the subject is formed through affect in the digital ecosystem, and how knowledge and ethics are newly constructed through the practices of such subjects. The focus will be on exploring how the nature and role of the humanities are changing in digital environments.

In addition, the institute aims to identify the qualitative changes that digital transformation brings to subjectivity and the construction of humanistic knowledge and ethics, thereby expanding the terrain of humanistic thinking. Furthermore, it seeks to reconstruct the boundary between popularity and academicity by treating the practices of knowledge and ethics occurring outside of institutions as academic subjects and theoretical resources. Through this, it will shed new light on the crisis of university-centered institutional humanities and seek the possibility of a future-oriented transformation of the humanities.

The project group will be operated as a multidisciplinary research team led by Professor Kim Jeong-kyung from the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Incheon National University. In addition to researchers from Incheon National University, leading professors from major universities in Korea will participate as co-researchers to deepen and broaden the scope of the research. From Incheon National University, Professor Lee Dong-hoo (Department of Media and Communication), Professor Ha In-hye (Department of English Language and Literature), and Kim Min-a (Senior Researcher at the Humanities Research Institute) will participate as co-researchers. From outside the university, Professor Kim Soo-ah (Seoul National University), Professor Kim Ye-ran (Kwangwoon University), and Professor Cho Sung-hoon (Korea University) will join to add further depth and breadth to the research.

In addition, four full-time researchers will be newly recruited to strengthen the research workforce and establish a more solid research foundation. Based on this, Humanities Research Institute Incheon National University is expected to produce consistent and meaningful research outcomes and to establish itself as a leading research institute redefining the nature and role of the humanities in the digital environment.