Youngeun Koo

Youngeun* Koo is Assistant Professor of Korean Studies, a position partially funded by the Korea Foundation. Her research explores the transnational politics of care and the body as key sites of modern governance in postcolonial societies.

She earned her MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and her PhD in Korean Studies from the University of Tübingen. Prior to joining Lund, she held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Irvine (as a Korea Foundation Fellow) and at Harvard University (as SBS Korean Studies Fellow).

Her book in progress, tentatively titled Governing Care: Professional Social Work and the Making of the International Adoption System in Cold War South Korea, interrogates the formation of the world’s most extensive international adoption program through the institutional and ideological frameworks of professional social work. This project is based on extensive archival research in six countries, oral history interviews with key professionals, and examination of personal adoption files. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Social History and the Journal of Asian Studies. Her second project examines Scandinavian medical aid in Cold War South Korea as a site of transnational knowledge production on the body, health, and disability.

At Lund, Koo teaches BA and MA courses on modern and contemporary Korean societies, body politics and governance in Southeast and East Asia, and research methods in Asian Studies. 

She has also been featured in media outlets such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Sydsvenskan, where she has commented on a range of issues related to South Korea.

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

*Pronounced [Young-oon], with a soft ending.