The History as Social Practice: Unconventional Historiographies of Korea project is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching on representations of Korean history. This project is supported by an institutional grant by the Strategic Initiative for Korean Studies of the Academy of Korean Studies. Established in 2008, it is hosted by the Centre for Korean Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands. The project website contains information about the project, its staff and project-related activities as well as relevant links and contact details.

History as Social Practice is a comprehensive project that seeks to shed light on the interactive process of production, reproduction and articulation of Korean histories by various social actors in different media. Academic historians do not own history. They are players in an uneven social field of production of meaning where diverse actors engage the past in different ways for different purposes. This project defines history as a social process and pays particular attention to the unconventional historiographies of Korea produced either outside the realm of traditionally recognized authoritative sources, or by a rereading of these sources.

More than just a research project in its own right, this programme is also running a peer-reviewed e-journal, Korean Histories, where articles broadly related to the subject of this project are published.

The Leiden University Korean Studies MA/MPhil programmes are centred around the core concepts guiding this project. A yearly international intensive graduate students’ course by the staff of the project, along with international workshops and conferences complement the dissemination phase of the project.