Ewha Faculty Selected for Outstanding Achievements in the Academic Research Support Program
- Date2025.12.19
- 600
Three faculty members of Ewha Womans University—Professor Lee Youngmi (Department of Speech-Language Pathology [Graduate School]), Professor Won Sook-yeon (Department of Public Administration), and Research Professor Lee Namhee (Ewha Institute for the Humanities and History)—have been selected for the Ministry of Education’s “Top 50 Outstanding Research Achievements” under the Academic Research Support Program.
The “Top 50 Outstanding Research Achievements” initiative was established to identify and disseminate exemplary research outcomes produced through the Academic Research Support Program across the fields of humanities and social sciences, science and engineering, and Korean studies. This year, a total of 245 research projects were submitted, and based on a comprehensive evaluation of originality, excellence, and academic contribution, 50 achievements were ultimately selected (26 in humanities and social sciences, 20 in science and engineering, and 4 in Korean studies).
Professor Lee Youngmi
Professor Lee Youngmi of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology (Graduate School) has conducted extensive research on communication development in children with disabilities and parent–child interactions. She has focused on intervention research that provides practical support to infants and young children with disabilities and their parents by developing a multimodal interaction database and early assessment and intervention models.
Professor Lee’s research team systematically collected video- and audio-based multimodal data on interactions between parents and infants with hearing impairments, as well as between parents and typically hearing infants. The team conducted fine-grained analyses centered on key interaction indicators that explain early language development, including parental linguistic input and verbal responsiveness, infants’ vocalization characteristics, joint attention between parents and children, and turn-taking in vocal interactions. Through this process, the study secured objective data on interactions occurring in real home environments and established a structured analytical framework suitable for both clinical and research-based interpretation.
The study received high recognition for empirically demonstrating that parent–child interaction data can be collected and analyzed in non-face-to-face environments with a level of accuracy and reliability comparable to in-person assessments. This achievement addresses the limitations of traditional face-to-face evaluation methods and presents new possibilities for early assessment and intervention in households with limited access to services or geographic constraints. Furthermore, by quantitatively operationalizing parent–infant interactions through multidimensional indicators, the research expands the scientific foundation for understanding parent–child interaction in the field of early intervention. The findings hold significant academic and social value, as they suggest future potential for the development of evidence-based assessment and intervention models, as well as AI-based automated analysis and remote parent-coaching solutions.
Professor Won Sook-yeon
Professor Won Sook-yeon of the Department of Public Administration was selected as an Outstanding Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences by the Ministry of Education in 2017 and has since conducted research under the theme “(New) Precariats and the Politics of Recognition: Intergroup Politics Surrounding Minority Policies and ‘Policy Choices.’” Her book, Immigrants as ‘New’ Precariats in the Korean Immigration Policy Regime: Navigating Identity, Rights, and Governance (Routledge, Taylor & Francis), selected as an outstanding research achievement in 2025, represents a synthesis of her research over the past five years.
Through this book, Professor Won provides a multifaceted analysis of the social and policy dynamics surrounding racial diversity in Korean society, which has entered an era of 2.5 million foreign residents. Widely regarded as the first study in Korea to apply the analytical framework of “New Precariats,” the book offers a meticulous examination of Korea’s complex and distinctive immigration reality, addressing three core dimensions: conflicts over ethnic identity, clashes of rights between Korean nationals and immigrants, and the policy governance mechanisms that mediate these tensions.
Comprising seven chapters, the book is expected to make a substantive contribution to the design of tailored immigration policies that reflect internal conflicts and heterogeneity among immigrant groups, as well as to the establishment of future policy directions aimed at minimizing policy failure. Ultimately, it suggests pathways for foreign immigration to serve as a driver of social development rather than a social burden in Korean society. Despite Korea having the second-highest immigration growth rate among OECD countries, related research has remained relatively limited. Published by the internationally renowned publisher Routledge, this volume is anticipated to play a key role in introducing the distinctive characteristics of Korea’s immigration reality to the global academic community.
Research Professor Lee Namhee
Research Professor Lee Namhee of the Ewha Institute for the Humanities and History was selected for the Outstanding Research Achievement award for the Ewha Medical History Series volume Building a Healthy Nation: Mind, Body, and Women. The Ewha Institute for the Humanities and History operates the “Disease and the State” research team (Principal Investigator: Professor Jung Hye-jung) under the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Humanities and Social Sciences Research Institute Support Program and publishes a volume in the Ewha Medical History Series each year. Building a Healthy Nation: Mind, Body, and Women is the fourth volume in the series and was completed as a collaborative work by the “Disease and the State” research team, with Research Professor Lee Namhee participating as the lead author.
This book analyzes how the mind, the body, and women’s bodies were reconstructed within the gaze and policies of the state during the process of modern nation-building. Focusing on key themes such as mental illness and the civilized state, opium and narcotics, the working body and authoritarian states, and women’s diseases and patriarchal states, the volume traces how concepts of disease and modes of management evolved alongside national development. The series is organized into three parts—Part I, “The Civilized State and Mental Illness”; Part II, “The Authoritarian State and the Body”; and Part III, “The Patriarchal State and Women’s Bodies”—and offers a multidimensional analysis of how non-communicable conditions came to be defined as diseases or incorporated as objects of control in response to historical demands and state and societal needs.
The book’s excellence was further recognized this July when it was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book by the National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Korea. As a result, it will be distributed to university libraries nationwide and utilized as an educational and research resource, serving as a catalyst for expanding medical history research into higher education settings. Moreover, as a comprehensive edited volume that integrates medical history, historical inquiry, and comparative analysis, it has been praised for its accessibility and usefulness as an introductory text, even for readers unfamiliar with the field of medical history.