Associate Professor

Location
1 Avenue Antoine Depage  
1050 Bruxelles

Mailing address
Université libre de Bruxelles
Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, 50 - CP 172/01
1050 Bruxelles
Belgique

CV

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Bio

Juliette Schwak is an associate professor in International Relations at the Department of Political Science of the ULB. She is affiliated with the REPI and is also a member of EASt and of the Institute for Critical Area Studies (ICAS). She obtained her PhD in Asian and International Studies in 2017 from City University of Hong Kong. Before being appointed at the ULB, Juliette Schwak was an Assistant Professor in International Political Economy at Tokyo International University (2017-2019) and Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Franklin University Switzerland (2019-2025). She is an expert of South Korea and has extensive research experience in East Asia, as she worked and conducted field research in Korea, the Philippines and Japan. She was a visiting fellow at the Asia Development Institute of Seoul National University (2016) and at the Jesse M. Robredo Institute of Governance at De la Salle University, Manila, Philippines.
An interdisciplinary researcher, her research bridges political economy and sociology. She is interested in everyday relations and practices of the global economy, de-growth transitions, and the relations between literature, film, popular culture, aesthetics and political economic imaginaries. She has published on film and political economy in the Review of International Political Economy. She has also worked on private actors (business, consultants) in policy-making in Korea and France.
Her research on Korea’s nation branding and development cooperation policies has been published in major outlets such as Third World Quarterly, Asian Studies Review or Global Society. Her first monograph, Endless Contest: the Making of a Competitive Society in South Korea, is currently under review with the University of California Press.
She is currently the PI of an ERC Starting Grant project PENEA (2026-2031), which focuses on post-growth nostalgia in contemporary East Asian societies.


Research presentation

I am currently leading an ERC Starting Grant project (PENEA) on post-growth nostalgia in contemporary East Asian societies. The project explores whether East Asians today long for their pre-developmental past (whether real or imagined) in reaction to the limits of growth-oriented social transformation, and whether they mobilise on this nostalgic basis towards the creation of post-growth futures. Research will be conducted in six countries with different levels of economic development (Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia) and will rely on a combination of media analysis, surveys, interviews, participant observations and discourse analysis. It is the first systematic comparative study on political economic nostalgia and its effect on citizens’ mobilizations. PENEA ties nostalgic affect to post-growth transformations in a region where the limits of rapid economic development are particularly acute, and offers an empirically-grounded theoretical framework to understand the role of the past in post-growth transformations. .

Areas of interest

  • Everyday International Political Economy
  • Imaginaries, emotions and culture in political economy
  • De-growth transitions
  • East Asian societies, particularly South Korea
  • Politics of development
  • States’ promotional policies (nation branding, public diplomacy)
  • Private actors (businesses and consultants) in policymaking

Secretariat

Afin de prendre rendez-vous, merci de me contacter par email : juliette.schwak@ulb.be


Teaching

  • POLID300 Global Public Policy
  • POLID103 Politique mondiale (co-titulariat avec Julien Jeandesboz)


Selected publications

Peer-reviewed articles
 
  • Schwak, Juliette (Forthcoming). ‘Consultocracy and the power of benchmarks in the French “Startup Nation”’, Policy Studies.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2023) ‘Exporting the will to compete in Korea’s global Saemaul Undong’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 53(1), 146-164.
  • Son, Sarah A. and Juliette Schwak (2022) ‘K-drama narrates the national: inter-Korean identities in Crash Landing on You’, Asian Perspective, 46 (3), 501-521.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2021) ‘Korea’s Exemplary Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Successes and Challenges’, PRISM, the Journal of Complex Operations, 9 (4), 200-212.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2021) ‘Foreign aid and discourses of National Social Responsibility: Evidence from South Korea’, Journal of Global Ethics, 17 (3), 302-322.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2021) ‘Domesticating competitive common sense: nation branding discourses, policy-makers and promotional consultants in Korea’, Global Society, 35 (2), 247-268.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2020) ‘Film in an International Political Economy classroom: for a critical pedagogy of the everyday’, Review of International Political Economy, 27 (6), 1330-1353.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2020) ‘Nothing new under the sun: Korea’s developmental promises and neoliberal illusions’, Third World Quarterly, 41 (2), 302-320.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2019) ‘Dangerous Liaisons? State-Chaebol Cooperation and the Global Privatisation of Development’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 49(1), 104-126.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2018) ‘All the World’s a Stage: Promotional Politics and Branded Identities in Asia’, Asian Studies Review, 42(4), 648-661.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2016) ‘Branding South Korea in a Competitive World Order: Discourses and Dispositives in Neoliberal Governmentality’, Asian Studies Review, 40 (3), 426-443.

Chapters in edited volumes

  • Schwak, Juliette and Sarah A. Son (2023) ‘Screening the Inter-Korean conflict: the politics of Crash Landing on You’, in South Korean Popular Culture in the Global Context Beyond the Fandom, edited by Sojin Lim, Routledge (forthcoming).
  • Schwak, Juliette (2022) ‘Exporting K-Quarantine: Korea’s Promotion of Its COVID Management Strategy,’ in Security, Development and Sustainability in Asia, Volume III, Environment, Sustainability and Human Security, edited by Zhiqun Zhu, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
  • Schwak, Juliette (2022) ‘Park Geun-hye’s Impeachment: Theorising a Political Economic Revolt’, in South Korea after the 2017 Impeachment: Implications for Politics, Society, and Democracy, edited by Julia Dumin, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 97-123.

Other publications

  • Schwak, Juliette and Francesca Frassineti (2021) ‘Unlocking Start-Ups: South Korea’s Efforts to Curb the Dominance of Chaebol’, Istituto Per Gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), 19 April.

  • Schwak, Juliette (2020) ‘Chaebol reform still an uphill battle after Lee Kun-hee’, East Asia Forum, 4 December.

  • Schwak, Juliette (2020) ‘La fin du libre-échange?’ [The end of free trade?], Esprit, September.
Updated on June 3, 2026