UW–Madison graduate students Younsun Choi and Thao Pham, both from the School of Education, have been selected as recipients of 2025 IRIS Graduate Student Summer Fieldwork Awards.
Presented by the Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS), these awards provide support for graduate students across disciplines to conduct essential international research, reinforcing the university’s commitment to global scholarship.
Choi is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her project, “Historicizing the Figure of the Ideal Human in Curriculum: Colonial Affect in Korean and U.S. Educational Visual Materials from the 19th to 21st Centuries,” looks into how visual culture has shaped the ideal human across different historical periods. This summer, she will conduct fieldwork in South Korea, where she will collect archival materials from the 19th and 20th centuries. With her work she hopes to explore how curriculum has constructed the figure of the ideal human, particularly in the context of U.S.–Korea relations.
Pham is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies. Her research explores how historical institutions and events shape contemporary educational outcomes and achievement gaps, with a focus on Vietnam. Her experiences in Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance and later as a lecturer at Foreign Trade University have shaped her interest in how the country’s history and government development continue to affect education and public policy today. With her research Pham hopes to explore how looking more closely at Vietnam’s history can inform more culturally grounded and effective policymaking.
To learn more about IRIS’ 2025 summer fieldwork awardees, check out this news post.