Dr. Yoon Jung Park is currently a freelance researcher. She has affiliations as Senior Research Associate of the Sociology Department at Rhodes University (Grahamstown, South Africa) and Visiting Professor in the African Studies Department of Howard University (Washington, DC). She also serves as the convener/coordinator of the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China (CA/AC) Research Network, an international network of scholars, researchers, graduate students, journalists, filmmakers and practitioners, which she helped to establish in 2007.
Dr Park is the author of A Matter of Honour. Being Chinese in South Africa (Jacana/Lexington Books) and dozens of articles and book chapters in scholarly publications including Les Temps Modernes, African Studies, African & Asian Studies, Transformation, and the Journal of Chinese Overseas.
Her current research interests include ethnic Chinese in southern Africa and perceptions of Chinese people by local communities; migration; race, ethnicity and identity; race, class and power dynamics; affirmative action and Chinese South Africans; and xenophobia. She also has done work on issues of gender and gender-based violence in the US and South Africa, international development, and arts & culture.
Dr. Park has a PhD from University of the Witwatersrand (Sociology); an MA from Fletcher School at Tufts University (International Relations); and a BA from Pitzer College (Sociology and Women’s Studies).
She is married and has an 11-year-old daughter. Dr. Park was born in Seoul, Korea; grew up in Los Angeles, CA; lived in Africa (Johannesburg and Nairobi) between 1995 and 2010; and is currently based in the greater Washington, DC area. She has also lived, for brief periods, in Cuernavaca, Mexico; Boston, Massachusetts; and San Jose, Costa Rica. She is fluent in English and Spanish, speaks kitchen Korean, and has smatterings of Kiswahili and IsiZulu.