I am a doctoral candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University (fields: North American Religions & History) and a Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. I am a religious historian of modern America with a particular emphasis on 'MBC' (migration, borders, and citizenship), Asian America, and US imperialism. My research interests and writings range from the religious dimension of U.S. immigration policy (both historical and contemporary), religion and US imperialism, the religious-racial history of the Cold War to the intersections of religion, race (color-blindness), and class in the transpacific making of modern meritocracy.

My dissertation, “Sacred Borders, Divine Hierarchies: American Liberal Protestants, US Immigration Policymaking, and the Fashioning of Asians as “Undesirables,” 1882-1924," a historical study of the religious-moral dimensions of U.S. immigration policies and it argues they were not just legislative or economic projects but deeply moral and theological endeavors. By centering religion in immigration policymaking between the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, I examine how American liberal Protestants played a pivotal role in shaping racially restrictive and religiously selective immigration laws. This project visualizes how American liberal Christianity shaped and redefined legal and popular notions of good and bad and beneficial and unbeneficial immigrant.

For the 2024–25 academic year, I am a C. Conrad & Elizabeth H. Wright Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society, a Mid-Dissertation Research Grantee at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and a Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration.

My work has been supported by a range of internal and external fellowships, grants, and academic organizations. At Harvard, I have been awarded support from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard-Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, the Korea Institute, and the John L. Loeb Fellowship. Externally, I have received fellowships and grants from the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative, the American Academy of Religion, and the Organization of American Historians, among others.

At Harvard, I have worked closely with the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights (EMR) where I served as a coordinator of the Asian American Pacific Islander Studies Working Group and as a member of the Student Advisory Council.

I hold an MTS in Religion and Social Sciences from Harvard Divinity School. Prior to arriving at Harvard, I received a BA in Sociology and Theology and a ThM in History of Christianity from Yonsei University, Seoul. In addition to my academic interests–and frequently integrating with them– I am also a composer and music producer, writing original music for independent, non-profit documentaries.