معرفی
Youngeun Koo is an Assistant Professor (tenure-track Associate Senior Lecturer) of Contemporary Korean Society at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Department of History, Lund University. Her position is partially funded by the Korea Foundation. She holds a PhD in Korean Studies from the University of Tübingen and an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. Prior to joining Lund, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University (2023–24) and the University of California, Irvine (2022–23).
Her research centers on the interplay between care and power, and the entangled histories of Western humanitarianism and modern governance in postcolonial societies. She is currently completing a book manuscript titled Governing Care: Professional Social Work and the Making of the International Adoption Industry in Cold War South Korea, 1953–1979, based on multi-sited archival research, oral histories, and personal adoption files. Her second project explores Scandinavian medical aid in Cold War South Korea as a site of transnational knowledge production on the body, health, and disability.
Her published work appears in the Journal of Social History, Journal of Asian Studies, and Anthropology Matters Journal, among others. The articles reflect a consistent thematic focus on international adoption, Cold War geopolitics, transnational governance, and the role of humanitarian actors in shaping postcolonial Korean society.
- SBS Korean Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University (2023–24)
- Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Irvine (2022–23)
- DAAD support
- Academy of Korean Studies support
- Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies support
- Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship
- Presbyterian Historical Society Research Fellowship
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 served as a journal editor and peer reviewer, and has organized academic events such as Korea Day: Nordic Research in Korean Studies. Her research has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Sydsvenskan. She is actively contributing to both academic and public discourse on Korea’s social and political development.
