Bianca Trifoi, Ph.D
Education
Ph.D., History, The George Washington University, 2025
M.A., Asian Studies, Florida International University, 2017
B.A., International Studies and Spanish, Florida Atlantic University, 2015
Biography
Bianca Trifoi is Term Assistant Professor of Asia and the World at UAA and a historian of North Korea and the Cold War. She received her Ph.D. in History from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 2025. Her research interests include children and childhood, socialist discourse in everyday contexts, mundanity and everyday life, print culture and aesthetics, socialist solidarity and internationalism, and the use of oral history and biography to study the Cold War. Her first book project will focus on a comparative analysis of the universal or broadly shared concept of a 鈥渟ocialist childhood鈥� that helped bring North Korea together with its Eastern European allies as an expression of socialist solidarity in the 1950s-1960s.
Bianca has lived, worked, and studied in South Korea, and has spent part of every
year there since 2013. She knows English, Romanian, Spanish, and Korean, and is currently
learning Russian.
Bianca is passionate about teaching history as a means for students to explore diverse
perspectives and understand the assumptions that shape their own thinking. Through
an emphasis on bottom-up history, she encourages students to question and challenge
these assumptions, cultivating critical thinking skills that they can carry into their
careers and daily lives. Her goal is to help students use historical insight to foster
collaboration, empathy, and a deeper awareness of the world around them.
Teaching Responsibilities
HIST A101 Western Civilization Before 1650
HIST A121 The Making of East Asian Civilization
HIST A122 East Asia in the Modern World
HIST A321 Modern China
HIST A390 Themes in World History
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
鈥淐hildren at the Center of Society: Prospects for the Study of Childhood in North Korea.鈥� North Korean Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 2024, pp. 74鈥�87.
Book Reviews
Review of Panda, Ankit, Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea. H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews. July 2022.
Other Publications
鈥淧rotestantism and Christianity on the Korean Peninsula 鈥� A Bridge or Barrier to Korean Reconciliation and Cooperation?鈥� Published as part of the Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power project at Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs,
Georgetown University. November 2024.