Academy of Mobility Humanities - Konkuk University

To be the leading global research academy specializing in mobility humanities, connecting scholars, decision-makers and the general public through research, education and outreach programmes that are innovative and impactful.

1.To develop alternative approaches to human relationships with culture, movement and technologies from a humanities perspective.

2.To approach mobility humanities issues from inter-disciplinary perspectives

3.To engage the public with mobility humanities issues through our subsidiary institution, the Mobility Humanities Education Center (MHE) where we will deliver a free-of-charge, high quality civic education programme

4.To develop full graduate courses (Masters and PhD) on Mobility Humanities within 5 years. Drawing on our intellectual expertise, courses will be delivered in Korean, English and Japanese

5.To conduct our flagship research project: “Mobility Humanities based on the co-evolution of human beings and technologies” and disseminating the results through international and local networks

6.For AMH to become a global research base for Mobility Humanities studies where innovation and inter-disciplinary work attracts scholars from around the world for the purposes of knowledge production, exchange and transfer. As part of this goal, MHE aims to become the central point for all civic education and outreach programmes on Mobility Humanities research.

1.Our inter-disciplinary, research team will contribute to a paradigm shift in Mobility studies, through individual research projects that take a global outlook on Mobility Humanities issues. Topic include (but are not limited to) human geography, philosophy, media and communication, the study of space, multiculturalism, diaspora, literature and identities.

2.AMH will conduct our flagship research project: “Developing a Shared Future through the Co-Evolution of Humans and Technologies” and disseminating the results through international and local networks

3.To deliver our research results in a variety of formats suitable for academic and non-academic audiences through publications, blogs, lectures, festivals, workshops, courses, policy briefings and outreach activities

4.To run MHE as our primary outlet for our public education programmes, ensuring there is a constant flow of dialogue between the university and general public

Access, equity and quality are key themes that run through the heart of AMH’s work. In addition to the usual series of academic publications that are produced at research institutes, we will also deliver video lectures and develop a free-of-charge Humanities Festival aimed at non-experts. Access to our academic productions will be accessible, free-of-charge from our website where our work can be easily downloaded. Furthermore, we are also assisting scholars to disseminate their findings through our journal, the International Journal of Diaspora and Cultural Criticism which is both free and open-access to all. We will also be using popular social channels of communication such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant communication with our scholarly and general public audiences, alerting them to new free content and/or events run by our Academy.

AMH plans to run a graduate programme on Mobility Humanities within 5 years. A key goal for this programme is to run it at low/without tuition fees for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A fundamental part of AMH’s work is the establishment of MHE, our Mobility Humanities Education Center which will serve as the civic arm our work. Through MHE, we will disseminate AMH’s research in a range of formats suitable for a public engagement programme that is also free to access. AMH’s research will be communicated through MHE to the general public through lectures, workshops, cultural events, festivals and other outreach activities aimed at non-academic audiences.

Finally, in order to maintain a standard of high quality across our outputs, all of our lecturers, researchers and academic staff will have to publish their works through authoritative indexes (e.g. SCOPUS) to ensure rigorous quality assurance for our knowledge production. In these key ways, AMH plans to contribute to the creation of a more equitable, accessible and fair society.

We believe the world in an era of high-mobility where use of mobility technologies such as the car, internet, mobile devices and the like have become second nature to human beings. AMH research projects are investigating social issues arising from this era of high mobility from an inter-disciplinary perspective. We will use the academic results of these research projects to develop a brand new and innovative curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students within 5 years.

This curriculum will represent a convergence of research between humanities, social science and technology studies, related to our flagship research project outlined earlier in this application. The aim of these multi-faceted undergraduate and postgraduate programmes is to approach social issues from a variety of academic perspectives, contributing to innovative societal solutions that can help the wider goal of making the world a better place for us all.

AMH is managing the Mobility Humanities Education Center (MHE). As the Center is an educational institute, we envisage people visiting as they visit libraries and museums in their local areas. In this public space, we will deliver lectures and our public engagement programme, taking what we have learned through research conducted at AMH and disseminating it, free of charge to the public through MHE. MHE will host book concerts, lecture series, festivals, cultural events and more with the aims of engaging the public on mobility humanities issues, and erasing the gap between University and Society. 

AMH is passionate about the role higher education can play in overcoming global challenges. From our perspective, the high mobility era has seen rapid technological development that should have provided endless freedom, and opportunities for global networking. Instead, we believe that humans were not able to develop at the same pace. We now have serious issues related to thought, culture and even life itself as we see society dissolving across the globe. For example, endless discrimination and struggle due to race, gender, ethnicity, class and religion. Then there is the destruction of the natural environment as technological development is used for profit-seeking ventures, and finally, we are concerned with the abandonment of a common human culture and human solidarity as we experience the darker side of technological development of mobile devices that encourage heightened individualism. We are concerned about humans’ extreme inability to think through innovative solutions, preferring to “Google” over problem-solve which may have reduced imagination and creativity.

Our Academy’s research staff are all strongly committed to an agenda that looks at education through a social lens. By this, we mean researching social issues as outlined in other parts of this application, dispersing our research results amongst decision-makers as well as scholarly and civic audiences, suggesting policy changes based on sound research that can have a genuine, positive impact on the global challenges outlined in this section.

AMH hopes to contribute to sustainability through our MHE Center and our innovative approach to the mobilities paradigm, putting humanities at the center of the discourse. We aim to contribute to sustainability through:

The constant flow of 2-way dialogue between university and public will help to ensure the Academy’s work is fresh, relevant and impactful for bettering societal issues identified in its research works.

Working on the relationship between society, humanity and technology, offering practical, policy-related and academic solutions so that people can enjoy the fruits of development in a high mobility era without the destruction of nature or the dissolution of societal relations.

AMH was founded on the principles of social responsibility in higher education and aims to conduct its research for the broad goal of making this world a better place for technology and humans to co-exist. We will do this as follows:

Suggesting a new mobility humanities paradigm as one solution to the ethical issues surrounding the development of high-mobility technologies.

Advocating for “the right of mobility freedom and equality” to be recognised as a citizen’s basic human rights and suggesting policy initiatives that can help realize this aim.

Developing realistic policies which can innovatively re-design our urban spaces as places where individual lives are inter-linked, developing a future world based on “social solidarities” and alternative ethical ties beyond race, gender, ethnicity and the like.

Through our work, we will offer a new way to form common culture based on a sense of difference AND similarities that can offer innovative methods of global communication, and solidarity between individuals, groups nations, and cultures.