Welcome to my website. I am associate professor in the department of political science and international relations at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. Prior to joining Ewha, I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2012 and taught as assistant professor at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York (CUNY). I was a 2021 Taiwan Fellowship recipient and visiting scholar at the National Taiwan University. My research interests broadly concern key issues in diversity and sustainability, including identity politics, sustainable development, and inequality.
My first book project, Rethinking Community Resilience: The Politics of Disaster Recovery in New Orleans (2021, NYU Press), investigates how civic capacity may compromise, rather than facilitate, the process of building resilience after crisis. Examining post-Katrina New Orleans as a case study, I show that active civic participation after Katrina was interrelated with the unequal pace of recovery across the neighborhoods, rendering the city more vulnerable to future risks.
My second book project examines gender equality in East Asia. Focusing on three democratic countries - Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, I ask why Asian countries show different public perceptions and institutional tolerance on gender equality.