Dr. Michael W. Hurt is a photographer and professor living, shooting, and researching in Seoul. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies. He also started Korea’s first street fashion blog in 2006 and published the first English language book about Korean Fashion in 2009. He researches youth, street fashion, and digital subcultures in Seoul while lecturing on Cultural Theory and Art History at the Korea National University of the Arts. He was the… Show more Dr. Michael W. Hurt is a photographer and professor living, shooting, and researching in Seoul. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies. He also started Korea’s first street fashion blog in 2006 and published the first English language book about Korean Fashion in 2009. He researches youth, street fashion, and digital subcultures in Seoul while lecturing on Cultural Theory and Art History at the Korea National University of the Arts. He was the first researcher to focus on Korea’s Street Fashion hyperculture and has been shooting and publishing through it since 2007. His present research focuses on using the camera to access and document emergent digital subcultures in Korea, including the political economy of the “pay model” on Korean Instagram, Seoul’s drag underground, and the youth-centric LGBTQ movement in Korea. His work can is Visual Sociology in that he applies ethnographic analyses centering the camera and visuality to the youth cultures and communities that also tend to form precisely around such visual images and digitally-enabled social spaces. He also does cultural consulting on Korea for companies from Google to Pinterest, P&G to Meta, and continues such research that coheres around his ethnographic photography. Show less

Put together a look book of representative street fashion looks at Seoul Fashion Week together with a team of interns I gathered from local fashion interested students and other creators based in Seoul.

Conducted ethnographic research for stripe partners with Meta as the end client.

Lecturing in Visual Sociology.

Taught "Visual Sociology" and "Hallyu Marketing."

Conducted ethnographic research for Institute for the Future with Google as the end client. Was lead researcher for gathering the ethnographic data to publish the white paper "CHAT APPS: FRONTIERS AND CHALLENGES FOR JOURNALISM: A SOUTH KOREAN CASE STUDY."

Taught "Marketing Management", "Supply Chain Management", and "The Marketing of Subcultures", all much to my own surprise.

Gathered on-the-ground cultural signals and reported them through the Sharpr system to provide a cultural intelligence report to the end client Proctor & Gamble.

Assistant professor responsible for teaching various culture and Korean studies courses.also director and founder of the Critical Cultural Studies Program (CCSP), a school within a school program designed to teach American-style University courses to Korean kids in order to raise critical thinking and language skills to an international level. Also known in Korean as the "문화 비평가과정."

Taught "Understanding the Art of Photography" in the Art School (미술대학) and other courses in English.

Teaching courses in Department of Foreign Languages (English) and the Arts Department (Introduction to Photography).

Runway, backstage, and street fashion photography, and wrote English content (to be translated into Korean) run by one of Korea's oldest fashion industry newspapers (TINNews).

Taught a variety of classes, from basic skills-based courses to content courses for the major, such as "Multicultural Literature in the United States" and a mcourse on new media.

Starting at Feetmanseoul.com, I was the first street fashion photographer in Korea, and developed that into Yahaemag.com, a magazine covering Korean fashion and lifestyle.

Continued teaching AP US History, though my tenure was short here because of conflict over the curriculum. So rather than be hobbled by parents who wanted things in the curriculum that would not help the students, but nevertheless be blamed for their low performance, I simply resigned so as not to be left holding the bag , I simply resigned so as not to be left holding the bag while while being forced to do the students a disservice.

Continued teaching American History. Since it wasn't an official AP course, there was more freedom to explore research subjects more in-depth with the students.

Worked in pure street and documentary photography until around 2006-7.

Created the curriculum and taught US History, a course that was followed by the majority of foreign language high schools in Korea at the time.

AP US History Teacher. Continue to be the cutting edge, US history, teacher in Korea, and at the time only the only students who had scored a five on the AP US history exam had been at the Minjok Academy, with a ratio of around 1 or 2 out of around 20 receiving a 5 on the exam. After my year teaching the students, out of around 60 students or so, more than a dozen got 5s, 24 or so got 4s, and most of the rest received 3s.