Youngeun Koo

I am an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests lie broadly in the connections between care and power, as well as the intersecting histories of humanitarianism, (social) science, and welfare.

I joined the Center as an Associate Senior Lecturer in the fall of 2024, a position partially funded by the Korea Foundation. I received my MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and my PhD in Korean Studies from the University of Tübingen. Prior to my appointment at Lund, I was the 2023–24 SBS Korean Studies Postdoctoral Fellow with the Korea Institute at Harvard University and a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Critical Korean Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

I am currently completing a book manuscript, tentatively titled Governing Care: Professional Social Work and the Making of the International Adoption Industry in Cold War South Korea, 1953–1979, which traces the formation of the world’s most extensive and enduring international adoption program through the lens of professional social work. I situate the adoption program within the broader formation of a care system that emerged from a complex web of power and dependency among Western and Korean social workers, humanitarians, and the authoritarian state. This project is based on extensive archival research in six countries, oral history interviews with key professionals, and an examination of personal adoption files. My work has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Social History and has also appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies. My second project explores one of the largest Scandinavian medical aid programs in South Korea between the 1950s and 1970s, examining new Cold War dynamics of knowledge production related to health, illness, and disability.

My research has been supported by various institutions, including the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the Korea Foundation, the Academy of Korean Studies, the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Seoul National University, the Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship at the University of Minnesota, and the Presbyterian Historical Society Research Fellowship.

My website: https://www.youngeunkoo.com/