Dr. Youngeun Koo is the 2023–24 SBS Korean Studies Postdoctoral Fellow in the Social Sciences. Her research focuses on the entanglements of care, humanitarianism, and development as crucial sites of social governance in the Global South. Her current book project, tentatively titled Expert, Empire, and Dictator: The Transnational Politics of Care and the Making of International Adoption in Cold War South Korea, 1961–1979, tells the story of the world’s longest-running and largest international adoption program from the little-known perspective of the first generation of professional social workers in postwar South Korea. During her fellowship at the Korea Institute, she will teach a seminar “Governing Bodies in Twentieth-Century Korea” and revise her book manuscript.
Koo obtained her PhD in Korean Studies (summa cum laude) from the University of Tübingen in August 2022. She has an interdisciplinary and transnational background, having studied history, international development, and area studies in South Korea, the UK, and Germany. Before joining Harvard, she was a Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine.
Fields of study: Korean Studies; history
Research topics: child welfare; international adoption