This is the first post in a series of interviews conducted by the Woodruff Library with the 2017-2018 Woodruff Library and Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) Fellows. Funded by the Laney Graduate School, the library and ECDS award fellowships to advanced graduate students expecting to complete their dissertations by the end of the fellowship period. Fellows are placed within the Woodruff Library and ECDS to work in an area related to their subject specialization or interest, culminating in a formal presentation in the spring.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your favorite book? What’s your favorite thing about Emory/Atlanta?
I am Yeon Kyung (Grace) Park. I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science. I am a data service fellow at ECDS for this academic year. I am from Seoul, South Korea, and I came to the U.S. when I was 14 years old, attended a boarding school in MA, went to Univ. of Penn where I got my BA in international relations/political science. I worked as an intern for UN bodies in DC and in Seoul before I went back to school and earned my MPP at Harvard. Then I worked as a researcher for two years and began my doctoral degree in political science at Emory. My husband is also doing his doctoral degree at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. My favorite book is the Bible. I love how Emory’s people and system have been always ready to help me make academic progress while learning how to be a mother to a toddler.
What are you researching for your dissertation?
My dissertation research focuses on state commitments and credibility and the interaction between domestic politics and inter-state dynamics. I explore the conditions under which leaders pay domestic audience costs (i.e. face political punishments for backing down after publicly making foreign policy commitments).
What interested you about the Woodruff Library Fellowship?
Researchers grow to maturity with the resources and technologies of libraries, but many students graduate without thoroughly exploring their libraries’ diverse collections and programs that can improve their academic experiences. I became interested in the fellowship since it was the right opportunity to learn how libraries communicate with scholars.
What will you be working on this year for your Woodruff Library Fellowship?
The Data Services fellowship focuses mainly on providing consultations and support for students and faculty making use of such data for their research, such as helping them locate data or helping them clean data to make them usable. Fellows can pursue a project by collaborating with interdisciplinary teams of researchers, librarian, and technologists to explore tools for quantitative analysis and visualization.