Cultural Anthropology
Goeun is a Ph.D. student in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is interested in folk art traditions, festivals and competitions of Thailand. Specifically, she seeks to investigate how different agents work together to reproduce traditional performing arts. She hopes that this line of work will shed more light on the mechanism by which different interests are negotiated and compromised to create one organic cultural heritage. For her master’s thesis, she conducted an ethnographic study on the Nora(นอร่า) theatre troupes in Songkhla province, southern Thailand during the period when they were preparing for UNESCO heritage nomination. Based on this experience, she will expand her work to both regional and national levels by looking at different cultural bodies, organization and policies that promote traditional performing arts in Thailand.
Goeun holds her BA and MA in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations (Southeast Asian Major) from Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.