Dr Yookyeong Im
School of East Asian Studies
Lecturer in Korean Studies
Full contact details
School of East Asian Studies
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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Dr. Yookyeong Im is an anthropologist specializing inlaw, language, gender and sexuality, and social movements in the context of contemporary Korea. Her work examines the ways in which the law engages with social discrimination and political aspirations. Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, among others.
She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her doctoral thesis, which explores how legal advocacy has emerged as one of the most potent means in South Korean queer activism since the late 2000s. With ethnographic and historical approaches to the increasing judicialization of social movements, she revisits the question of law’s potential in emancipatory politics and reveals the dilemmatic function of law in shaping queer political imaginations.
Before joining the University of Sheffield, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Korean studies, Indiana University Bloomington.
- Qualifications
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PhD in Anthropology with a secondary field in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (Harvard University)
MA in Anthropology (Seoul National University)
BA in Sociology (Yonsei University)
- Research interests
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Dr. Im maintains active research interests in the following subjects:
- law and society in contemporary East Asia
- legal professions and judicialization of politics
- linguistic anthropology and cultural semiosis
- queer feminist praxis
- religion and politics
- social movements and international human rights mechanisms
- Teaching interests
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Dr. Im has teaching experience in interdisciplinary research mentoring in modern Korean history and culture, sexuality and citizenship, social theories, and language and culture. While her own training comes primarily from anthropology, she incorporates multiple disciplinary and methodological approaches to Korea in her teaching. Those approaches include, but not limited to, ethnography, history, sociolinguistics, geopolitics, and legal studies.
She seeks to bridge the classroom and communities by translating ethnographic theorisation into pedagogy. She is particularly interested in fostering learning from, with, and for communities and helping students who are keen on connecting knowledge production and civic engagement.
- Teaching activities
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EAS3043 Researching Korea 2 (Law and Social Change in Contemporary Korea)
EAS3044 Korea Research Project
- Publications
Im, Yookyeong. (forthcoming in 2025) “Pending: The Temporality of Crisis and Normalcy during COVID-19 in South Korean Queer Activism.” Journal of Korean Studies 30 (1).
Im, Yookyeong. 2020. Mujikae kyohoe rŭl kiŏk hamyŏ (Remembering Rainbow Church). Munhaktŭl (Literatures) 59: 230-258.
Im, Yookyeong. 2016 Kyohoekongkan k’wiŏhwahaki: sŏngsosucha kyohoe ësŏŭi k’wiŏnongtam (Queering the Church Space: Queer-themed Jokes in an LGBTQ-dominant Church). Journal of Cross-cultural Studies 22 (2): 81-122.