Dr. Don Baker is Professor of Korean civilization in the UBC Department of Asian Studies and the Co-director of the Centre for Korean Research at SPPGA. He’s been involved with Korea since 1971, when he began three years of service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the southwestern city of Gwangju. He received his Ph.D. in Korean history from the University of Washington in 1983 and has taught at UBC since 1987. His research focuses on the role of philosophy and religion in Korean history, with a special focus on the often contentious relations between religious communities and the state.

Don Baker is the author of Korean Spirituality and Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Chosŏn Korea, in addition to numerous articles on Korean history, religion, philosophy, and traditional science and medicine. He recently published A Korean Confucian Scholar’s Advice on How to Be Moral, an annotated translation of two of Dasan Jeong Yagyong’s commentaries on the Confucian Classic Zhongyong. He is also the general editor of a forthcoming multi-volume Cambridge History of Korea. He is currently researching the role played by religious communities during the Gwangju Democratization Movement of May, 1980.