Korea University team selected for international R&D program with Lund University

Korea University professor Kim Sung-do, left, and Lund University professor Jordan Zlatev / Courtesy of Korea University

A Korea University research team, led by professor Kim Sung-do in the school’s department of linguistics, has been selected for the international cooperative research support program “Get Started,” hosted by Lund University in Sweden.

Kim’s team had a kickoff meeting with Lund researchers on Jan. 12 before officially beginning their joint research project.

Get Started is a competitive program designed to activate international collaborative research, selecting leading academic teams from around the world through a rigorous peer review process. According to a Korea University official, prestigious institutions such as University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and University of Geneva in Switzerland were also selected for this year’s cycle.

Among Korean universities, only Korea University and Seoul National University were chosen, highlighting the global competitiveness of humanities research in Korea.

The team said the joint project, titled “Homo Ritualis,” will apply methodologies from cognitive semiotics to conduct comparative analyses of ritual practices in Eastern and Western cultures.

The research will examine rituals in Korean traditions — including Buddhism, Confucianism and shamanism — alongside Western rites such as Protestant and Greek Orthodox ceremonies, with the goal of uncovering deeper insights into human embodiment and cognitive symbolic systems.

The Swedish research team is led by Jordan Zlatev, a professor at Lund University specializing in the fields of bodily mimesis, linguistic typology of space and motion, and cognitive linguistics. The collaboration is expected to further strengthen academic exchanges between the two countries.

Graduate students from Korea University’s linguistics department and its interdisciplinary program in visual culture will also participate in the project, contributing to the development of future generations of scholars.

“The project will represent a new attempt to reframe human ritual behavior from a cognitive semiotic perspective,” Kim said. “The collaboration with leading international scholars will open a new horizon in interdisciplinary humanities research.”