In the 4-year curriculum for doctoral students of the Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures”, the second year comprises of 6 to 12 months of Fieldwork and Archival and Library Research in East Asia. Doctoral student Eetu LAUSTELA embarked in September 2024 for his 10-month fieldwork stay at the RTG’s partner institution Seoul National University in South Korea.

In the first half of 2025, LAUSTELA took part in the third annual “Korean Political Studies Colloquium” organised online by the Association of Korean Political Studies. Each of the five monthly workshop sessions had an attendee send a paper in advance that was then shortly presented, followed by comments and discussion. In addition to giving feedback on other papers monthly between January and May, LAUSTELA presented his own paper, titled “Contemporary North Korean Depictions of the Future and the concept of ‘Socialist Civilization’” on April 11. The in-depth feedback received during the session provided great help in strengthening the foundations of the paper, which is set to become a chapter in his doctoral thesis.

From June 1 to 4, 2025, LAUSTELA attended the AAS-in-Asia Conference 2025, “Reframing Global Asias: Margins, Modernities, and Mobilities,” as part of a pre-arranged double-panel “Varieties of Environmentalism in East Asia” which discussed case studies from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and North Korea to critically examine popular and emerging environmental discourses and practices. LAUSTELA’s presentation on June 1 was titled “War with Nature: State Environmentalism and Green Futures in Contemporary North Korea,” discussing North Korea’s environmental efforts through its recent reafforestation campaign and the role of the environment as part of the state’s projected futures. An engaging discussion with both the sizeable audience and other panelists ensued, as well as many more interesting panels and networking opportunities in the following days.

In the final week of his fieldwork in South Korea, LAUSTELA attended the “Shaping Futures: East Asia as Practice” conference held at Seoul National University. LAUSTELA presented his methodology-focused paper “Challenges and Prospects of Researching State-Driven Future Projections: The Case of North Korea” as part of the panel “Governing the Future: Ideology, Infrastructure and the Politics of Promise” on July 16. The theme of the conference around study of the future demonstrated that the topic is attracting much attention in anthropology and provided an opportunity to discuss ways of studying the future across disciplines. He also attended the pre-workshop meeting for graduate students on July 13, getting to know other students from across the world with similar research interests.