معرفی
Nancy Ko is a historian specializing in labor, ecology, and technology in the global Mediterranean, currently pursuing her PhD in the Department of History at Columbia University. She serves as a part-time lecturer at Pratt Institute, where she designed and teaches the introductory course on Global Environmental History.
- Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, Columbia University
- Instructor, Pratt Institute (Spring 2025)
- Education: MPhil in Modern Middle East Studies, University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholar, 2017); BA in History and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Harvard University (Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center Fellow)
Her research traces the lives and labors of freedivers and spearfishers across the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Pacific from the 18th century to the present, interrogating the intersections of race-making and imperial networks. Drawing on her lived experience as an AIDA-certified Master Freediver and descendant of Jeju Island female freedivers, Nancy conducts multilingual, transoceanic research in Arabic, Hebrew, Ottoman and Modern Turkish, and Greek.
Nancy’s scholarly and public-facing work has been supported by major fellowships and grants, including the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Council for American Overseas Research Centers, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Her research has been published by Harvard Judaica Library and featured in The Drift and The New Yorker.
- Derek Bok Teaching Award, Harvard University (2021)
- Thomas Hoopes Prize, Harvard University
- Rhodes Scholarship (New York & Magdalen Colleges, 2017)
- Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
- Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellowship, Harvard University
A multilingual scholar, Nancy has lived, dived, and researched across 10 languages and regions. She co-presided over Columbia’s Graduate History Association in 2020–21 and has taught courses on history and ethics at Columbia, Harvard, and Ca'Foscari Universities. Her personal and academic roots connect to Korea Strait freediving traditions and community resilience through her family’s bodega in south Brooklyn.
