School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics

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Department: School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Subject: Japan and Korea
Email address: 658843@soas.ac.uk
Thesis title: The Power and Influence Held by the Queen Dowager Regents of Nineteenth-Century Chosŏn Korea
Internal Supervisors: Dr Anders Karlsson & Dr Owen Miller

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Lucy’s research focuses on the queen dowager regecnies, suryǒm ch’ǒngjǒng, of the nineteenth century.

This research began during her master’s in Korean studies at the University of Oxford, having done her MSt thesis on the regency of Queen Dowager Chŏngsun. She continued this research at the Inter-University Centre (IUC) at Sungkyunkwan University through a Korea Foundation Fellowship.

At the IUC she researched the state institutionalised aspects of the regencies in nineteenth-century Chosŏn, and the han’gǔl letters written by Queen Dowager Sunwŏn during her regencies. During her time at the IUC Lucy studied Academic Korean Language, writing papers and giving presentations on her research. Lucy is now a recipient of the Korea Foundation Graduate Scholarship to fund her PhD at SOAS.

Lucy’s PhD project is a continuation of her previous research to study of all four queen dowager regencies that occurred in the nineteenth century. This project will explore key events from nineteenth-century Chosŏn politics in relation to the queen dowager regencies that occurred between 1800 to 1866. She aims to identify if and to what extent Queen Dowager Chŏngsun, Queen Dowager Sunwŏn, and Queen Dowager Sinjŏng had influence in court politics, how they were involved in politics and discussions, and how their regencies influenced the politics and society of late Chosŏn.

Lucy will analyse entries of the Chosǒn wangjo sillok, Pibyǒnsa tŭngnok, Sŭngjŏngwŏn ilgi and Ilsŏngnok to conduct this research. Her research is supervised by Dr Anders Karlsson and Dr Owen Miller. Lucy’s interest in Korean history began while taking Korean language classes at Sixth-form college, through which she had the opportunity to visit South Korea in 2017 on the Korean Government Invitation Program. She continued to learn Korean at SOAS undertaking an undergraduate degree in Korean, including a language year abroad at Korean University.

During this time Lucy’s interest for Korean history grew, and so she wrote her undergraduate dissertation on Chosǒn’s petition drum, sinmun’go.