Allison Foltyn
About
Allison Foltyn is a recipient of the Summer 2019 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. The award provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students with financial support to develop fluency in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and expertise in the regions in which these languages are spoken. Every year the Center for Global Studies awards between 12-15 fellowships to UW students. Click here to learn more.
As a Master’s student in the Korea Studies program at the Jackson School of International Studies, one of my areas of particular interest is the relationship between Korea and Japan and the history of this relationship, especially as the relationship between the two continues to shift. After graduating with a BA in International Studies from Simon Fraser University in 2017, I spent a year in Seoul learning Korean, but have now reached the point where I am in need of Japanese language skills as well. I received a Summer FLAS through Global Studies to take Intensive Japanese at the University of Washington to jump-start my Japanese, which I am now continuing in the academic year. Learning Japanese in addition to Korean will enable me to complete research in both languages, which is especially important for researching the colonial period in Korea, and also to work more effectively in the region. After completing my degree I hope to work and research in the region, and the language skills I have acquired through FLAS will be integral to this.