# Nicholas Harkness Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology Social Anthropology Program Director ![Photo of Nicholas Harkness](/sites/g/files/omnuum6776/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2025-07/harkness065r_cropped.jpeg?itok=KlV9cCW-) location\_on Tozzer Anthropology Building 308 & 310, 21 Divinity Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138 smartphone [(617) 495-3807]() email laptop\_windows [Teaching, Research, Publications](http://scholar.harvard.edu/harkness) ### Research and Teaching Interests Language, music, and semiotics; urban anthropology; anthropology of religion; South Korea. **Nicholas Harkness** is the Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. He specializes in the ethnographic study of communication and sociocultural semiosis (sign-processes). His research in South Korea has resulted in publications on various topics, including voice, language, music, religion, ritual, kinship, liquor, and the city of Seoul. His first book, *Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea* (University of California Press, 2014), was awarded the Edward Sapir Book Prize by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology (Co-Winner, 2014, American Anthropological Association). Harkness's second book is titled *Glossolalia and the Problem of Language* (University of Chicago Press, 2021). A number of his papers have been devoted to developing an anthropological approach to “qualia.” These papers incorporate the innovations of contemporary semiotics into the ethnographic theorization of sensuous social life. - ## Person Categories [Faculty](/person-categories/faculty) - ## Program [Social Anthropology](/course-area/social-anthropology) - ## Faculty Role [Ladder Faculty](/faculty-role/ladder-faculty) - ## Role [Faculty](/role/faculty)