Soo Ah Kwon | Center for Global Studies

Contact Information

Asian American Studies
1208 W. Nevada St, MC 142
Urbana, IL 61801

(217) 244-9530

sakwon@illinois.edu

Research Areas

Global Governance

Global Knowledge

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Associate Professor

Biography

Soo Ah Kwon is currently Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She was former Department Head. She holds faculty affiliations with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and Center for Global Studies. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests include youth activism, youth culture, global governance and citizenship, and the institutionalization of race and diversity in higher education.

Her current book Working the System: Infrastructural Youth Activism inside the United Nations (Duke University Press, under contract) is an ethnography of how youth and their advocates are co-shaping and challenging international policies around sustainable development and peace and security.

Her book Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism and Affirmative Governmentality (Duke University Press, 2013) examines the rise of social justice-oriented nonprofits which support youth of color activism as embedded within a logic of neoliberal governance to enable and manage potentially “at-risk” youth of color to become "good" self-empowered democratic subjects and deploys civil society as a mode of affirmative governmentality.

She is co-editor of South Korea’s Education Exodus: The Life and Times of Study Abroad (University of Washington Press, 2015) that examines the considerable exodus of South Korean children to English speaking countries.

She was also co-PI of The American University Meets the Pacific Century (with Nancy Abelmann, Tim Liao, and Adrienne Lo), a research project that examined the University of Illinois as a contact zone in which rapid surge of international undergraduate students, particularly from China and South Korea, interact with American students, whose futures are increasingly impacted by global transformation. This research was funded by the Spencer Foundation.

Research Interests

activism and social change
race and inequality
citizenship and governance
critical youth studies
critical ethnic studies

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Awards and Honors

Lynne M. Martin Professorial Scholar, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2025-2028. Awarded for outstanding achievements in teaching and mentoring.
Conrad Humanities Scholar, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017-2022. Awarded for excellence of scholarship of mid-career scholars.
List of Teachers Ranked as Outstanding, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Fall 2006, Fall 2007, Spring 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2012, Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2025.

Fellowships

Humanities Release Time Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2025-26.
Center for Advanced Studies Associate Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2023-24.
Humanities Release Time Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2018-19
Humanities Release Time Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2009-10
Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society Institute Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007-2008.

Select Grants

LAS COVID-19 Revitalization Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2024-2025.
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, The Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice Research Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Combatting Anti-Asian Racism” with Co-PIs Susan Koshy and Junaid Rana. 2021-2022
USDA HATCH Illinois Experiment Station, “Youth Participation and the Making of Global Citizens.” 2012-2016
Spencer Foundation, “The American University Meets the Pacific Century (AUPC)” with Co-PIs: Nancy Abelmann, Tim Liao, and Adrienne Lo. 2014-2015
“Immigrant and Second- Generation Youth Building Political Capital in their Families and Communities,” USDA HATCH Illinois Experiment Station, 2006-2011.
The Center for Popular Education and Participatory Research (CPEPR) at UC Berkeley, Irvine Foundation, Waitt Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and the Berkeley School of Education. Monies to Co-Found Research Center, Awarded total $250,000

Courses Taught

AAS 100: Introduction to Asian American Studies
AAS 215/AFRO 215/AIS 295/LLS 215/GWS 215: US Citizenship Comparatively
AAS 246: Asian American Youth in Film
AAS 346/HDFS 341: Asian American Youth
AAS 539/EPOL 518/HDFS 539: Youth, Culture, and Society
HCD 533: Communities in American Society

Danville Correction Center (Education Justice Project)

Youth, Culture and Society
Coming of Age in the United States

Additional Campus Affiliations

Associate Head, Asian American Studies
Associate Professor, Asian American Studies
Associate Professor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies

Intellectual Property

Books

Kwon, Soo Ah. Working the System: Infrastructural Youth Activism inside the United Nations. Duke University Press (under contract)
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2013. Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism, and Affirmative Governmentality. Duke University Press

Edited Books

Lo, Adrienne, Nancy Abelmann, Soo Ah Kwon, and Sumie Okazaki, eds. 2015. South Korea’s Education Exodus: The Life and Times of Study Abroad. University of Washington Press.

Journal Articles

Kwon, Soo Ah. 2025. “Institutionalizing Youth in the United Nations.” Globalizations 22 (3): 394-409. Special Issue, “The Politics of Child and Youth Representation in Global Governance: Confronting International Institutions.” https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2471128
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2019. “The Politics of Global Youth Participation.” Journal of Youth Studies 22 (7): 926–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1559282.
Kwon, Soo Ah, Xavier Hernandez, and Jillian L. Moga. 2019. “Racial Segregation and the Limits of International Undergraduate Student Diversity.” Race Ethnicity and Education 22 (1): 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1417830.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2018. “Notes on an Illiberal Pedagogical Mode.” American Quarterly 70 (2): 173–77.
Kwon, Soo Ah and Mimi Thi Nguyen. 2016. “Nonprofits, NGOs, and ‘Community Engagement’: Refiguring the Project of Activism in Gender and Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies.” Scholar & Feminist Online 13 (2). http://sfonline.barnard.edu/navigating-neoliberalism-in-the-academy-nonprofits-and-beyond/soo-ah-kwon-mimi-thi-nguyen-nonprofits-ngos-and-community-engagement-refiguring-the-project-of-activism-in-gender-and-womens-studies-and-ethnic-studies/.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2013. “The Comforts and Discomforts of Race.” The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences 6 (3): 39–50.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2013. "The Politics and Institutionalization of Panethnic Identity." Journal of Asian American Studies 16 (2): 137-157.

Kwon, Soo Ah. 2012. “Deporting Cambodian Refugees: Youth Activism, State Reform, and Imperial Statecraft.” Positions: Asia Critique 20 (3): 737–62.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2008. “Moving from Complaints to Action: Oppositional Consciousness and Collective Action in a Political Community.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 39 (1): 59–76.
Nygreen, Kysa, Soo Ah Kwon, and Patricia Sanchez. 2006. "Urban Youth Building Community: Social Change and Participatory Research in Schools, Homes, and Community-Based Organizations." Journal of Community Practice 14 (1): 105- 122.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2004. “Autoexoticizing: Asian American Youth and the Import Scene.” Journal of Asian American Studies 7 (1): 1–26.

Book Contributions

Kwon, Soo Ah. 2025. “Youth of Color Organizing and Affirmative Governmentality.” In Handbook on Youth Activism. Edited by Jacqueline Kennelly and Cihan Erdal. De Gruyter Academic Press: Berlin.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2018. "Deporting Cambodian Refugees: Youth Activism, State Reform, and Imperial Statecraft." Ethnographies of U.S. Empire. Comp. Ed. Carole McGranahan and John Collins. Durham: Duke University Press, 411-430.
Abelmann, Nancy, Soo Ah Kwon, Adrienne Lo, and Sumie Okazaki. 2015. “South Korea’s Educational Exodus: Introduction.” In South Korea’s Educational Exodus: The Life and Challenges of “Early Study Abroad, edited by Adrienne Lo, Nancy Abelmann, Soo Ah Kwon, and Sumie Okazaki. University of Washington Press. 1-21.
Kwon, Soo Ah. 2006. "Youth of color organizing for juvenile justice." Beyond Resistance: Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Policy and Practice. Ed. Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota. New York: Routledge Press, 215-228.

Recent Publications

Kwon, S. A. (2025). Institutionalizing youth in the United Nations. Globalizations, 22(3), 394-409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2471128

Kwon, S. A., Hernandez, X., & Moga, J. L. (2019). Racial segregation and the limits of international undergraduate student diversity. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(1), 59-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1417830

Kwon, S. A. (2019). The politics of global youth participation. Journal of Youth Studies, 22(7), 926-940. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1559282

Kwon, S. A. (2018). Deporting Cambodian Refugees: Youth Activism, State Reform, and Imperial Statecraft. In C. McGranahan, & J. F. Collins (Eds.), Ethnographies of U.S. Empire (pp. 411-430). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv120qtmn.24

Kwon, S. A. (2018). Notes on an Illiberal pedagogical mode. American Quarterly, 70(2), 173-177. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2018.0012

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