Songdo Campus

The Humanities Research Institute Incheon National University (Director: Professor Kim Jeongkyung) has been selected for the 2025 National Research Foundation of Korea's Humanities and Social Sciences Research Institute Support Project. The institute will receive a total of 1.56 billion KRW in research funding over the next six years.

The selected research project is titled "Affect, Subject and Knowledge/Ethics Formation in Digital Ecologies." It will run for six years, from 2025 to 2031. This study aims to investigate the process by which subjects are formed through affect in the digital ecosystem and how knowledge and ethics are newly constructed within those practices. Furthermore, it seeks to expand the horizons of humanistic thinking by exploring the qualitative shifts in the nature and role of the humanities due to changes in the digital environment. The project also aims to re-examine the crisis of university-centered humanities from a new perspective and explore possibilities for future transformation.

The project team is led by Professor Kim Jeongkyung from the Department of Korean Language and Literature and has established a collaborative research system involving a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Incheon National University and professors from other leading domestic universities. In addition to Professor Kim Jeongkyung, participating researchers from Incheon National University include Professor Lee Donghoo of the Department of Media and Communication, Professor Ha Inhye of the Department of English Language and Literature, and Senior Researcher Kim Min-ah of the Humanities Research Institute. The project will also strengthen multifaceted research cooperation with researchers from major domestic universities, including Professor Kim Soo-a of Seoul National University, Professor Kim Yae-ran of Kwangwoon University, and Professor Cho Sung-hoon of Korea University. The team plans to further enhance its research capabilities by hiring four additional full-time researchers to continuously produce meaningful research outcomes.

Meanwhile, the Incheon National University (President Lee In-jae) Research Office has been supporting the Humanities Research Institute with a total of over 104 million KRW since 2023 through its "Support Program for Outstanding Research Institutes' Group Research" and "Student Research Group Support Program," which has culminated in the successful selection for this major project. The Research Office stated that it expects further achievements as it continues to provide diverse support for group research, from individual research labs to research institute consortiums.