Dr Ming Curran, our Assistant Professor, has been awarded a grant for US$13,320 (HK$104,000) from the Academy of Korean Studies for his project titled From foreign luxury to domestic necessity: Coffee culture in Korea today. Dr Curran will use the grant to travel to South Korea to conduct research about the country’s vibrant and rapidly expanding coffee scene.
Drawing on theories of globalisation and intercultural communication, Dr Curran will explore the multiple social functions that coffee and coffee shops play in contemporary Korean society. He will conduct interviews with customers to examine how coffee and the space of the coffee shop are differently understood and consumed by various demographic groups in South Korea. In addition, he will analyse how local city governments use coffee to promote domestic tourism.
Dr Curran’s new project marks a continuation of his earlier research on coffee culture in Korea, which he conducted in collaboration with South Korea's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Associate Professor Michael Chesnut and which was published last year in the Journal of Consumer Culture under Sage Publications.
More information of the article can be found on the website here.
