Sera Yeong Seo Park

My research interests include social movements and activism, the moral dimensions of social life, and emotions and affect. 

My doctoral research (University of Cambridge, 2018-2022) examined the collective mourning and social movement that emerged in the aftermath of the Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea. I worked alongside families of victims, and allied activists who have been campaigning for truth, accountability, and memorialization. Reading the Disaster as a ‘critical event’ in contemporary South Korea in both national, political registers and individual, moral registers, I set out to understand what makes people activists and stand in solidarity with the affliction of a ‘distant’ other; how moral imaginaries and affects impel political communities; and how activist movements draw upon histories of mobilizations and engage with the broader political milieu in which they arise. Previously, I examined South Korean Protestant communities engaged in LGBTQ+ solidarity activism.

Prior to joining the Deparmtent of Social Anthropology at St Andrews as Associate Lecturer, I taught as Affiliated Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research & Teaching Associate at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. 

Activism and social movements, ethics and morality, emotions and affect, solidarity, death, victimhood, mourning and remembrance, hope and temporality, South Korea