Alison Choi
Teaching Assistant
alisonchoi2026@u.northwestern.edu
Alison Choi (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Northwestern University. Her research examines Korean American and Korean diasporic histories, located within the emerging field of the Pacific World. Alison’s dissertation investigates the lives of Korean prisoners-of-war imprisoned in Hawai‘i by the US military during World War Two. Beginning with the mo‘olelo (Native Hawaiian origin stories) of the land upon which Korean POWs were imprisoned, Alison examines the intertwined histories of Native Hawaiians and diasporic Korean prisoners during World War Two, alongside a structural analysis of the unprecedented imperial violence of the Japanese and US empires in the Pacific during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Outside of her research, Alison is involved in the movement for peace on the Korean peninsula led by the organizations Women Cross DMZ and Korea Peace Now!. In 2023, she was part of a cohort of “30-under-30” activists who participated in a national mobilization in Washington DC to end the Korean War, on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice. In addition, she volunteers for GYOPO, a Korean diasporic arts organization based in Los Angeles that organizes free educational and cultural programming in the LA area.