Hello everyone! I'm Will Gilbert, a second year MA student in the Korean Philosophy department here at SKKU. Coming from the US, I was fortunate to have three professors during my time as an undergraduate who taught Asian Philosophy. I was struck however that of the three professors, none held any specialty in Korean philosophy, despite having research interests in adjacent subjects. When it came time to apply to graduate school I was again struck at how few departments in the US even had a single faculty member with expertise in Asian philosophy. This led to me to seek schools outside of the US, and how I landed here at SKKU. Living in such a large city like Seoul has been a unique and fun experience and I look forward to completing my time here and continue learning about this rich subject of Korean philosophy.

This last year has been very fruitful and the students I have met have all been kind and hardworking. Since foreign students are such a rarity in this major at this school I sometimes feel like a curiosity for the others; however, I have always been treated with warmth and compassion. My research interests are Korean aesthetics and Korean religious syncretism. I hope to one day be able to spread information about Korean philosophy in the US, as there is a deeply unfortunate lack of scholars in this field in general, and especially outside of Korea. I hope to become a small part of a solution to this problem and look forward to working and writing along others who feel similarly.