Hyo-Seon Lee

Prof. Dr. Hyo-Seon Lee is a Professor at the Graduate School of Social Welfare at Kangnam University, South Korea. Her research focuses on social welfare, migration studies, and qualitative methodologies. Key areas include autobiographical narratives of disabled individuals, life stories of marginalized elderly Korean women ('Korea’s lost generation'), and Korean emigrants in Germany (nurses and miners from the 1960s–1970s). She collaborates with Prof. Detlef Garz (Johannes Gutenberg University) on acculturation experiences of migrant workers’ children, supported by DAAD and ZIS grants. Notable projects include the GEnKO exchange program (2012–2014) and a summer school in Korea. Her work bridges empirical studies with sociocultural analysis, emphasizing marginalized groups’ experiences in rapidly changing societies.

• Education: PhD in Philosophy (magna cum laude), Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg (1996).
• Research Themes: Morality in Korean adolescents, biographical narratives of disabled individuals, elderly women’s marginalization in capitalist/Confucian transition, Korean migrant workers in Germany.

She has conducted extensive qualitative studies on transnational migration and acculturation, including interviews with Korean nurses/miners in Germany and their descendants. Her visiting professorship at JGU (2012) focused on collaborative research projects addressing cross-cultural social welfare challenges.

Labs/Teams: Active in joint research initiatives with German institutions, emphasizing intercultural social work and migration policy analysis.