Research Interests

Globalization and transnationalism, im/mobility, humans and non-humans, 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 East Asian 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 and uneven globalization. Her work has been published in Amerasia, Journal of Asian Studies, Korea Journal, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Harvard Journal of Asian American Policy Review, and Agriculture, among others.

Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic study, Chung is completing her first book manuscript, entitled Unexpired: Undocumented Youth Time and Futurity (under contract with the NYU Press), which explores transnational experiences of undocumented Korean immigrant youth. 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, 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 food system and pharmaceutical industry in North and South America.

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 
• 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