Come to HUFS, see the world

Five years ago, in a Beijing hotel room, I came across an advertisement in The Chronicle of Higher Education for a position as Senior Lecturer at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS). At the time, I was on a short-term contract as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Tsinghua University, with little certainty about the future. With my PhD less than a year old and only a handful of publications to my name, I was far removed from the job security I now enjoy as a tenured associate professor in Umeå. Yet the world lay open before me, with nothing holding me back, so I submitted an application.

A month later – after a rather confused phone interview conducted from Osaka – I was offered the contract, complete with a one-way ticket to Seoul.

In the end, I spent three fascinating years at HUFS, meeting many remarkable people, among them my exceptionally bright student Sarah, with whom I later co-authored an article on the domestic Korean climate change debate. During those years, I travelled more than ever before – partly out of necessity (our faculty dorm room was simply unbearably small and hot for a family), but primarily by choice. I would not claim that all this travelling granted me a “global perspective” or anything of the sort, but it did expose me to fragments of alternative lifeworlds and realities. At times, I fear I even became a little like the kind of person I once mocked.

And yet, making bulgogi in Gothenburg the other week, I realized that the journey is still very much with me – even as I have never felt more settled. More on that soon, once everything is in order. There will be pictures from our new home at Lyktvägen 5A in Tomtebo.