Sharon Yoon

Sociologist Sharon Yoon studies race and migration in East Asia, examining how marginalized communities build belonging, civic engagement, and the capacity to create social change. Drawing on years of immersive research conducted in four languages across China, Japan, and South Korea, her work challenges conventional ideas about communities often dismissed as peripheral, from ethnic enclaves to migrant churches.

In Osaka’s historic Koreatown, for example, Yoon documented how members of a small, long-stigmatized community responded to more than a thousand hate demonstrations by building a grassroots movement that ultimately contributed to Japan’s first national law addressing hate speech. By living and working alongside the communities she studies, Yoon seeks to understand their experiences on their own terms and bring greater attention to how communities facing exclusion can organize, adapt, and create lasting change.

“Growing up in a Korean immigrant community in New Jersey, I watched my parents and our church become a lifeline for newcomers, and I also saw how easily those bonds could unravel,” Yoon said. “Those experiences inspired me to study how communities facing exclusion hold together, adapt, and create lasting social change.”

For Yoon, these questions are closely connected to the Keough School of Global Affairs’ commitment to building the conditions for peace and human flourishing.

“My research asks how communities pushed to the margins work together to create change, even in the most trying circumstances,” she said. “These questions lie at the heart of the Keough School's mission, and I am fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues and students dedicated to building the conditions for peaceful coexistence. At a time of growing global division and distrust, I'm grateful to work at a university so deeply committed to the common good.”