Her academic journey on the topic of Buddhism and politics began when she chose to write her master’s thesis about a Buddhist monk general from Joseon Korea (1392-1910) who fought in battlefields during the Great East Asian War (1592-1598) and served the Joseon court as a de facto diplomat thereafter. Soon after, she embarked on her doctoral project on conceptual history of hoguk pulgyo (Buddhism for state-protection), which framed the convergence between Buddhism and the State over decades on the Korean peninsula. She is currently finishing her dissertation “Contested Memories of Hoguk Pulgyo (Buddhism for State-Protection): Meaning Making in the Buddhist Military Chaplaincy Service of the Chogye Order of Korean Buddhism.”

She is trained in curriculum design through her four years of education at Seoul National University of Education (B. Ed.), and East Asian thought from her MA from the Academy of Korean Studies. She is a PhD candidate at Freie Universität Berlin, and a visiting research fellow at Seoul National University till the end of 2023. She has worked for non-profit organizations such as Sakyadhita International Association and has written several articles on Buddhism in the West for Buddhist media.