Cambridge University’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (FAMES) and Cambridge Public Health Interdisciplinary Centre (CPH) have both announced new postgraduate master’s degree courses beginning in 2021.

Korean Studies at FAMES will be offered at MPhil level for students matriculating this September, whilst CPH has introduced an MPhil in Population Health Sciences, which will be jointly run between the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, the MRC Epidemiology Unit and the MRC Biostatistics Unit.

Although FAMES offers a PhD course in Korean, there is currently no master’s or BA course focusing exclusively on the language; the only present opportunity to study Korean before PhD level is for students completing Part II of the BA in Japanese, who can study beginner-level Korean in their final year.

Dr Nuri Kim has been appointed as the first University Lecturer in Korean Studies. He spoke to Varsity about the introduction of the MPhil, a course which he hopes will lead to the subject’s expansion. 

“We aspire to eventually expand Korean Studies from the graduate level to the undergraduate level, which means that undergraduate students would be able to receive a similar depth of training in the Korean language as in other languages at Cambridge,” he said. 

He went on to express hope for more Korean-related topics to be studied as part of other academic disciplines. 

Dr Kim attributes the increased demand for Korean courses to “growing interest in Korea and Korean Studies around the world [...] due to several factors including the rise of South Korean popular culture as well the continuing attention that North Korea receives [in the news]”. 

At present, undergraduate degrees in Korean are offered at only four UK universities.

Dr Kim continued that the Korean Studies MPhil is “just a first step in involving Cambridge more deeply in the study of such matters and exposing our students to new trends in our contemporary world”.

The new course in Population Health Sciences, meanwhile, comes at a time when several commentators have criticised what they see as Britain’s persistent lack of attention to public health matters.

Although Public Health courses are more widely offered than Korean, with 20 UK universities offering degrees at various levels in the subject, it is still a relatively small subject area, and Public Health is taught as part of Cambridge’s undergraduate medicine degree rather than as a separate subject.

Dr Kalman Winston, the course’s Education Manager, told Varsity: “the current pandemic has raised the profile of the population health sciences, and highlighted the need for expert practitioners with multidisciplinary training in the field”. He expressed hope that the new degree “will enable Cambridge University to remain at the forefront of delivering on this need”.

Dr Winston continued that the course will continue to aid the “very bright” future of Population Health Sciences at Cambridge, and that the “diverse teaching and assessment methods” and “student-centred approach to learning” will make the course a pioneering one. “As the course evolves, we hope to introduce new modules that reflect student feedback, developments in the field, and evolving partnerships across the University and beyond,” he said.