Dr. Christopher J. Bae, an assistant professor in the UH Mānoa Department of Anthropology and member of the Center for Korean Studies, has been awarded a $1.1 million research grant by the Academy of Korean Studies in South Korea.
The award, one of only six proposals in the world funded by the Academy’s Korean Studies Promotion Service (KSPS) division, will be used to conduct paleoanthropological research in Korea from 2011-15.
Titled “The Earliest Peopling of the Korean Peninsula: Current Multidisciplinary Perspectives,” Professor Bae’s project will develop an active long-term research program in Korea to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of eastern Asian human evolution during prehistory. “In particular, this project will integrate datasets from different social and natural science fields to reconstruct a synthetic view of human evolution in the region,” explained Dr. Bae, a resident of Mānoa Valley.
The research project is multidisciplinary in nature, and involves close collaboration with scientists from various institutions in Korea, England and the U.S. The proposal was strongly supported by the UH Mānoa’s Department of Anthropology, College of Social Sciences, and the Center for Korean Studies.