Profile

Ga Young Chung is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, and is affiliated with the Cultural Studies, East Asian Studies, Human Rights Studies, and the School of Education. In her research, Chung explores the im/mobility and precarity of humans and non-humans, particularly with respect to capitalism, colonialism, and uneven globalization. 

Drawing on a decade-long ethnographic study, Chung is completing her first book manuscript, entitled Unexpired: Race, Undocumented Youth Time, and Imperial Futurity (under contract with NYU Press), which explores how undocumented Korean immigrant youth engage with competing possible futures through education, military service, and activism. The work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Society of Hellman Fellowship, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Academy of Korean Studies, among others.

In her second book project, The Traveling Seeds: Agrocolonialism and Decolonial Imaginations, she chronicles the displacement of Korean soybeans from the Korean Peninsula to North America, South America, and Southeast Asia over the period spanning 1929-2019. Through archival research, memory work, and ethnography, she investigates how Korean soybeans, which were brought to the US by the “Dorsett-Morse Oriental Agricultural Exploration Expedition” in 1929, became one of the progenitors of the “American soybean” and were intertwined with the wars, lands, food system, and pharmaceutical industry in North and South America, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

Chung founded the interdisciplinary, community-engaged Asian American Seed Stewards in collaboration with Asian American farmers, plant scientists, and students in 2020. She is a co-investigator on two transnational research initiatives, Resilient Academics: Re-imagining Academic Horizons, funded by the Universitas 21, and Race and Gender: Theorizing the New Racialization of the Asian Migrants in South Korea, a multi-year research project supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea. In the community, she has been offering weeks-long Asian American Studies courses in collaboration with local grassroots Asian American organizations, taught in both English and Korean.

Chung serves as Chair of the Board at NAKASEC (National Korean American Service and Education Consortium) and as a board member of the Friends of Education Justice Project. Chung received her Ph.D. in Global Studies in Education with a graduate minor in Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and obtained her M.A. and B.A. in Sociology from Yonsei University in South Korea.

Awards & Honors

• 2025   Faculty Development Award, UC Davis
• 2024   Emerging Scholar Award, Global Studies Research Network
• 2023   Hellman Fellows Award, Society of Hellman Fellows Program, UC Davis
• 2022   DHI Network-Collaboration Award, UC Davis
• 2021   Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Public Scholarship, UC Davis
• 2018   Teachers Ranked as Excellent, Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, University of Illinois
• 2017   Teachers Ranked as Excellent, Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, University of Illinois
• 2017   Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop Fellow, Social Science Research Council
• 2016   Graduate Research Fellowship, Korean American Scholarship Foundation
• 2016   Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Dissertation Research Award, University of Illinois
• 2015   Jeffrey S. Tanaka Research Award, University of Illinois
• 2014   HASTAC Scholar, Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory
• 2009   Best Paper Award for Social Research, Korea Social Research Center
• 2008   Award of Honorary Mention for Best Thesis Award, Yonsei University, South Korea  
• 2008   Outstanding Graduate Student Thesis Award, Korea Institute for Future Strategies

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• 2025. “Incomplete or Extraordinary Koreans?: ‘Multicultural Soldiers’ and the Racialized Reconstruction of Authentic Koreanness.” Journal of Asian Studies. 84(2):484-496. (Coauthored with Choi, H.J.).
• 2024. “This is What We Wanted to Learn”: Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonial Education with 1st Gen Korean American Seniors in a Time of Asian Hate and Racialized Dread. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 46(1): 118-134.
• 2023. Opportunities to Breed Diverse Sweet Potato Varieties for California Organic Production. Agriculture, 13(12): 118-134. (Coauthored with Parker, Travis., Leach, Kristyn., et al.)
• 2022. An Ambivalent Magic: Undocumented Asian Immigrants and Racialized “Illegality” in the US Imperial Project. Amerasia Journal, 47(2): 267-282.
• 2021. Teaching Ethnic Studies Remotely Amid Global Pandemic. American Educational History Journal, 33-40.
• 2018. Divergent Paths toward Militarized Citizenship: The “Unending” Cold War, Transnational Space of Citizenship, and International Korean Male Students. Korea Journal, 58(3): 76-101. (Coauthored with Choi, H.J.)
• 2017. At the Crossroads of Change: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Undocumented Korean Americans’ Political Participation, and Upcoming Challenges. Harvard Journal of Asian American Policy Review, 27: 67-73.
• 2009. Invisible Children in South Korea: The Adaptive Efforts of Undocumented Mongolian Youth and Their Challenges. Korean Journal of Social Issues. 18(2): 9-44.

Book

• 2011. Undocumented Asian Migrant Youth in South Korea. Seoul, Korea: Salmi Poinŭn Ch'ang. (Coauthored with Kim, D. et al.)

Book Chapters

• 2024. Beyond Perseverance: Developing Academic Resilience for a Better Normal. In Priya Goel, Jonathan Simmons, and Smridhi Marwah (Ed.), Building a Better Normal: Visions of Schools of Education in a Post-Pandemic World. Emerald Publishing. (Coauthored with Priya et al.)
• 2022. Dismantling the “Undocumented Korean Box”: Race, Education, and Undocumented Korean Immigrant Activism for Liberation. In Diane C. Fujino & Robyn Magalit Rodriguez (Ed.), Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation. University of Washington Press.
• 2017. Undocumented Korean Immigrant Youth Activists in the United States and the Politics of Resistance. In Moon Young Cho (Ed.), Hell-Chosun In and Out: Anthropological Research on the Global Mobility of South Korean Youth. Seoul, South Korea: Noolmin.
• 2015. Makeshift Multiculturalism: The Transformation of Elementary School Teacher Training. In John Lie (Ed.), Multiethnic Korea?: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South Korea. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Coauthored with Abelmann, N. et al.)
• 2011. Undocumented Children of Foreign Migrant Workers in South Korea. In Minoru, I., Chen, G. & Shunya, Y. (Eds.), Reading Asia through Cultural Studies. Tokyo, Japan: SericaShobo.

Policy Briefs

• 2022. “COVID-19 and the Status of Undocumented Korean Immigrants in the New York Region.” New York: Minkwon Center for Community Action.
• 2011. “Immigration Policy and the 2011 Presidential Vote.” November 2011. International Organization for Migration (IOM) Seoul Office.
• 2011.  “Obama Administration’s Immigration Policy and Deportation Regime.” September 2011. International Organization for Migration (IOM) Seoul Office.          
• 2011. “The Rise of Anti-immigrant Policies: An Analysis of State Laws and Implications.” July 2011. International Organization for Migration (IOM) Seoul Office.             

• 2011. “The Reintroduction of DREAM Act and its Future.” May 2011. International Organization for Migration (IOM) Seoul Office. 

   

Op-Ed

• 2021. “Mirror of Hate: Atlanta Shootings and the Names We Should Call.” March 24, 2021. Changbi: South Korea. [Published in Korean]