Youjin B. Chung is Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (Division of Society and Environment).
Rural sociologist and human-environment geographer by training, her research lies at the intersection of the political economy of development, feminist and historical political ecology, critical agrarian studies, science and technology studies, critical animals studies, and African studies. She draws on ethnographic, archival, and participatory visual methods to examine the relationship between gender, intersectionality, development, and agrarian-environmental change in Sub Saharan Africa with a focus on Tanzania. She is interested in understanding how agrarian and pastoral landscapes, livelihoods, and lifeways articulate with capitalist forces, and how these processes of uneven encounter reshape the identities and subjectivities of rural women and men, as well as their relationships with the state, society, and the environment.
Her current research projects in Tanzania investigate some of the most contentious issues in contemporary development and environmental politics in Africa: large-scale agricultural/land investments, sustainable livestock intensification, and the critical minerals rush. Read more about her research here.
Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Dr. Chung taught at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. She holds a PhD and MSc in Development Sociology from Cornell University and a MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge.
Research:
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Contact:
341C Giannini Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720–3050
youjin@berkeley.edu