Position Title
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies
Research Interests
critical race theory, globalization and racial capitalism, transnationalism and social movement, comparative ethnic studies, critical Korean studies
Profile
Ga Young Chung is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, and is affiliated with the Cultural Studies, the Human Rights Studies, the East Asian Studies, and the School of Education. In her research, teaching, and organizing, Chung explores the movements and precarity of humans, non-human creatures, and materials, particularly with respect to racial capitalism, Asian settler colonialism, and uneven globalization.
Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic study, Chung is completing her first book manuscript, entitled Unexpired: Race, Undocumented Youth Time, and Imperial Futurity (under contract with the NYU Press), which explores undocumented Korean immigrant youth’ 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 played a role in the Vietnam War, the pharmaceutical industry, and the colonization of indigenous lands in North and South America.
In 2019, Chung co-founded the interdisciplinary, community-engaged Asian American Seed Stewards Lab in collaboration with Asian American farmers, plant scientists, and students. She is a co-investigator on two transnational research initiatives, Resilient Academics: Re-imagining Academic Horizons and Race and Gender: Theorizing the New Racialization of the Asian Migrants in South Korea. In the community, she has been offering weeks-long Ethnic Studies courses in collaboration with local grassroots Asian American organizations in 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, a group that supports incarcerated people’s access to higher education. 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
2024 Ewha Global Fellow, Ewha Womans University
2023 Hellman Fellows Award, Society of Hellman Fellows Program
2022 DHI Network-Collaboration Award, Davis Humanities Institute
2021 Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Public Scholarship, UC Davis
2020 Diversity Scholar, National Center for Institutional Diversity, University of Michigan
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). Forthcoming, Spring 2025. (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: Rise of Xenophobia, Black Lives Matter, and Pedagogy for Liberation. 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 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.
Book
2011. Undocumented Asian Migrant Youth in South Korea. Seoul, Korea: Salmi Poinŭn Ch'ang. (Coauthored with Kim, D. et al.)
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.