Sharon Yoon

Associate Professor of Korean Studies
Concurrent Faculty of Sociology
Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies

Research Interests

Race, Ethnicity and Migration in East Asia

Related Courses Taught

Race in Asia (MGA); Korean Migration and Globalization; Media and Politics in Asia; Korean Society and Politics

Biography

Sharon J. Yoon is Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and is an ethnographer who specializes in Korean diasporic communities. Her first book, The Cost of Belonging: Solidarity and Mobility in Beijing’s Koreatown (Oxford University Press, 2021), analyzed the intersections of ethnic entrepreneurship and community-building among Korean transnational migrants in China. Yoon’s second book, Activism in the Digital Age: The Fight Against Hate in Osaka’s Koreatown (under contract with Columbia University Press), examines an anti-racist movement that aimed to stop the rise of anti-Korean hate demonstrations in the largest and most historic Korean enclave in Japan. Prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Yoon was a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at Osaka University, and an assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha Womans University. Yoon was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2021. Her work has been published by prominent journals such as the Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Politics & Society. In addition to her academic research, she has worked with think-tanks such as the Korea Economic Institute and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, as well as local grassroots organizations in Asia.