Hye-kyung Lee

Biography

Hye-Kyung Lee joined King’s College London in September 2004 immediately after obtaining a PhD from the University of Warwick. She grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and studied Chinese language and literature at Seoul National University. Before coming to the UK for her MA and PhD studies, she worked as an international cultural exchange coordinator at the Korea Foundation and organised various performances, exhibitions and festivals in Korea and many Asian countries.  

Research Interest

"Cultural policy Cultural industries, management and critical cultural marketing Cultural consumption and fandom East Asian cultural policies and industries Public culture and public service broadcasting Over the years, Hye-Kyung Lee has researched and written on state policies for culture, arts and creative industries from Western and East Asian perspectives. Her approach is focused on exploring institutional and historical perspectives of the dynamics between the state and culture, and de-Westernising and internationalising cultural policy ideas and frameworks. Such an approach informs her research on cultural and creative industries, where she highlights social constructions of these industries and their operation. She has also been active in working on cultural marketing, consumption, fandom, cultural globalisation and Asian studies. Her writings on transnational cultural consumption and fandom demonstrate the increasing theoretical intersections between above discipline. Hye-Kyung is passionate about being engaged with contemporary cultural policy discussion and has been working with policy makers and institutions. She carried out a major research project ‘Analysis of cultural industries policies in the UK, France and Germany’ (2008-9) commissioned by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), and has been collaborating with the National Gallery in London to explore its online strategies (Understanding Cultural Consumers Online project, 2013-4). In 2015 she was commissioned by UNESCO Bangkok to write a report ‘Challenges and opportunities for the diversity of cultural expressions in the digital era in Asia’. Hye-Kyung was selected as a Korea Foundation field research fellow (2012-3) and has been awarded the Academy of Korean Studies’ two-year competitive research grant (2014-6). She co-edited Cultural Policies in East Asia (2014, Palgrave Macmillan), and is co-editing two more books the Routledge Handbook of Cultural and Creative Industries in Asia (2017, Routledge) and Asian Cultural Flows (2017, Springer). She is currently writing a research monograph Cultural Policy in South Korea: From Cultural Control to the Korean Wave (2016, Routledge). At the same time, she is developing research agenda, including cultural diversity and public culture in the digital age, and political economy of creative industries. Hye-Kyung welcomes applications for PhD topics related to any of her research interests."