Bio

Sun Joo Kim is the Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yonsei University in Korea and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington.

Her research focuses on the socio-cultural history of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). Both her college experience in 1980s Korea and a broad interest in the world history of revolutions and rebellions influenced her study of popular movements in nineteenth-century Korea, which in turn led her to analyze regional discrimination and the ways in which marginalized groups of people coped with their compromised conditions in history. Her interest in ordinary but forgotten people, including women, led her to study legal records that inadvertently preserved their voices. Other topics she has studied include slavery, kinship and genealogy, and art history. She is also dedicated to making underused yet illuminating primary sources available in English through conventional and digital publishing.

She is the author of several books. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in disciplinary journals such as Social History, Journal of Social History, and Historische Anthropologie, as well as in regional studies journals such as Journal of Asian Studies, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, and Journal of Korean Studies. She has also published in the Korean-language journals. She is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, most notably the American Council of Learned Societies Collaborative Research Fellowship, the Korea Foundation Advanced Research Grant, and the Social Science Research Council Doctoral Research Fellowship.

She has overseen several projects, including the Harvard Korean Alumni Biographies Project, the lecture series Korean Treasures at Harvard, and the research resource website Gateway to Premodern Korean Studies. She has also collaborated with colleagues in the field to offer a series of workshops on Korean art history and the New Frontiers in Premodern Korean Studies Workshop.