Hyunji Kwon

Hyunji Kwon was born in South Korea to a mother descended from North Korean refugees. Her research interests include trauma art pedagogy, memory work, community-based art education, BIPOC alliance, and mixed methods. Her work explores both local and global contexts, with careful attention to the ethics of working with trauma-affected populations, including women living in transitional homes and survivors of sexual assault.

She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles in leading journals, including Studies in Art Education, International Journal of Education through Art (IJETA), Visual Arts Research, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Art Education, Visual Culture & Gender and Feminist Studies. Additionally, she has co-authored a forthcoming book, Teaching Asian Art and Culture (Davis Publications), and contributed to numerous book chapters. She has served as a co-editor for IJETA and as a reviewer for Studies in Art Education and Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, among others.

She received the prestigious Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellowship from the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina in 2023. In 2025, she secured the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research Grants in the Arts award. In collaboration with researchers in literacy education and community psychology, local artists, an arts organization, and the YMCA, this mixed-methods project offers integrative arts classes that combine social emotional learning, visual art, and writing for urban children aged 8-10.

She is the recipient of the 2025 National Art Education Association (NAEA) Higher Education Division Southeastern Region Art Educator of the Year Award, the 2021 NAEA Woman’s Caucus (currently Coalition for Feminisms in Art Education) Mary J. Rouse Research Award—given to an emerging scholar with the potential to make significant contributions to the field of art education—and the 2021 South Carolina Art Education Association Higher Education Award. She has also received internal awards, including the 2025 Carol Jones Carlisle Faculty Award and the 2024 Dr. Mary Baskin Waters Service-Learning Award from the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of South Carolina.