Bio
Grayson utilizes an interdisciplinary approach and his research interests have been in Transpacific studies, the Cold War in Asia, the South Korean digital culture industry, and legacies of race, war, and mass violence. He is a recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctorship program and his current research explores the “K-Cop Wave,” the development of Korea’s police technology exports throughout the Global South, and the intersections between imperialism, policing, and militarization. He was a writer for the report titled “Another Year: Anti-Asian Racism Across Canada Two Years into the Covid-19 Pandemic” produced by the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter and Project 1907 in 2022. He was a plenary session facilitator and a panelist for the panel on grassroots organizing and coalition building in the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism hosted by the University of British Columbia in 2021.
Outside of the academy, he is a managing editor for the Youth Critics Initiative, a partnership program between the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA. Grayson’s creative work has been published in Held Magazine and Wayward Kindred, a comics anthology. He is also a digital collage artist and a member of Heung Coalition, a transnational leftist Korean collective.
Specializations
State violence; neoliberalism; police technologies; transpacific studies; imperialism and colonialism; security and militarization; Korea and Asia; Asian America; Asian diaspora
Degrees
- MA in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto
- Hon. B.Sc. in Psychology and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto