Hyewon Hong

Hyewon Hong is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She was born and educated in Seoul, South Korea, and her academic interests were shaped through extensive engagement with international development and humanitarian work.

In 2017, she worked in Malawi as an NGO project manager and research fellow, where she witnessed firsthand the tensions and frictions between South Korean development workers and Malawian local communities. This experience—together with her experience of severe cerebral malaria during her time in Malawi—prompted her to critically reflect on the legacies of colonialism, power asymmetries in development practice, and the historical roots of contemporary humanitarian encounters. These reflections ultimately led her to pursue the study of African history, with a focus on the colonial and postcolonial periods.

During her undergraduate years, Hyewon also participated in volunteer work in the Philippines and Cambodia through Jesuit-affiliated programs, and later worked with an international refugee service NGO in South Korea as a French, English, and Korean interpreter. Together, these experiences inform her scholarly interest in Afro–Asian relations, development, and post-imperial worldmaking, which she now examines through a historical and transnational lens.

Her current research focuses on African and global history, particularly Afro–Asian encounters, coloniality, and development in the twentieth century. She approaches these themes using comparative and relational methodologies, combining archival research with close readings of political texts, development discourse, and institutional sources.