Hee Eun Kwon, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo College, University of Tokyo. She is currently working on a book project that focuses on temporary migrants’ sense of belonging in Dubai, United Arab Emirates through the framework of “performance of cosmopolitanism.” Building on 32 months of ethnographic research, the project examines cosmopolitanism as a social performance that conceals systems of categorical inequality.
Kwon is a scholar of globalization using international migration as a case study to understand migrants’ sense of belonging and homemaking practices. Her research has been supported by the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Global Exchange Fellowship, as well as internal fellowships and grants from UC San Diego including Friends of the International Center, International Institute, Transnational Korean Studies, and the Department of Sociology. Her dissertation was awarded the Gwenn Okruhlik Dissertation Award from the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS).
Also passionate about bridging her research with her teaching, Kwon actively implements antiracist teaching pedagogies in her classroom that allows students to connect their lived experiences with sociological inquiry. Her teaching has been recognized with a university-wide Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, as well as the Graduate Student Contributions to Teaching and Learning Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on Teaching and Learning in Sociology.
She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California San Diego, and B.A. in Social Research and Public Policy from New York University Abu Dhabi. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kwon grew up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and has also lived in Abu Dhabi; New York; Paris; San Diego; and is now based in Tokyo. In addition to English, she speaks fluent Korean and French, conversational Arabic, and smatterings of Chinese.