Degrees prior to starting this degree program:

AB in Social Anthropology and Global Health & Health Policy, Harvard College, 2022

MPhil in Gender Studies, University of Cambridge, 2024

Areas of Interest:

• Medical, psychiatric, and feminist anthropology
• Plastic surgery, body modification practices
• Citizenship, belonging, national identity formation
• Body/bodily politics
• East Asia, South Korea
• History of medicine

Field Research Plans/History:

I am interested in questions of selfhood making, social belonging, bio-/body politics, and nation building through the usage of body modification practices, particularly within the South Korean and broader East Asian context. I plan to study how the development of modern day medical-aesthetic technologies such as plastic surgery are altering South Korean women’s understandings of their own personhoods, as well as how conceptualizations of the “ideal” or “deserving” South Korean woman, person, and citizen is being shaped—and continually re-shaped/re-imagined—by these technologies. I’m interested in how these aesthetic discourses of the body and self are adopted at the level of the state for the aims of nation building and national identity (re)formation, as well as in questions around race, transnationalism, gender, and health that arise in the study of these topics. 

Previously, I’ve conducted research in infectious disease epidemiology at the Fogarty Center of the NIH and in cultural psychiatry on eating disorders in non-Western contexts at Harvard Medical School. 

Publications, Multimedia Projects:

Publications:

Lheem & Becker (2024). “Culturally local perspectives are imperative to scientific excellence and health equity in eating disorders research: Commentary on Monocello et al. (2024).” International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Other Projects:

Choreographic (dance) projects on memory, haunting, archives, and belonging

Membership/activities in graduate student events or organizations:

Member of American Anthropological Association

Member of Society for Medical Anthropology

Intramural affiliations:

Dance, choreography, running