Youngmi Kim

Dr Youngmi Kim is Head of Korean Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she also serves as the Director of the Scottish Centre for Korean Studies. Youngmi joined the Department of Asian Studies as a Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies in August 2017. Prior to this, Youngmi was an Associate Professor of international relations and public policy at Central European University, Budapest (CEU). At CEU she was the director of the Global E-School in Eurasia, a large multi-country online education program in Korean Studies, bringing together 24 universities in 18 countries in Europe and Asia, supported by the Korea Foundation.

Youngmi also worked at the University of Edinburgh between 2007 and 2009 when she was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science. She has also taught at University College Dublin and has held visiting positions at the University of Vienna (Austria) and the National Chengchi University in Taipei (Taiwan).

From 2013 to 2016, she has also been involved in a large research and teaching capacity-building project in Myanmar, funded by the Open Society Foundations. In 2019, in cooperation with the Pansodan Art Gallery in Yangon, she led the 'Bahu (Plural): Healing Festivals', a series of art exhibitions in Myanmar promoting participation and inclusion among Myanmar's youth.

Youngmi’s main interests are in comparative politics and international relations, especially in the study of political parties and party systems, governability, inequality, online activism, global cities and urban policies, and comparative regionalism. Her current research explores the rise of polarisation, inequality and political contention in South Korea, urban management and planning in Myanmar, online political participation, activism and populism in Asia's democracies, and global cities.