Seonwoo Yoon is a DPhil Candidate in Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, and a Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Education and Economics from Korea University, and MPA with high honours from Yonsei University, Republic of Korea. Her dissertation was a comparative analysis of the effects of family policy on women’s responsibility burden of unpaid work based on capabilities approach. She also has over five years of research and work experience in Feminist & Human Rights NGOs as a project intern and volunteer; in research institutions (Korean Women’s Development Institute, Ministry of Health and Welfare) as a foreign correspondent and research assistant.
Her doctoral project explores why good care can often be elusive in everyday life, despite the increased attention and efforts from both the state and civil society. She examines the politics of interpreting care needs in relation to the administrative logic of welfare states and a participatory approach toward civil society, communities, and grassroots care movements. She conducts comparative studies across European and Asian countries, largely adopting different frame and discourse analyses.
Drawing on feminist and disability research on care and dependency, the first two chapters present comparative analyses that examine how care needs are differently constructed in elderly care policies towards ageing-in-place (Cash-for-Care Schemes, home care, and community care) and related discourses around municipalism, disability, and feminist politics. Other empirical chapters investigate the case of South Korea’s long-term care and community care policy to contextualise what care needs are recognised as ‘public’ and how discourses around gender, family, and dependency intersect in this process. She also aims to uncover differential care practices and repertories at the community level, focusing on the role of care/health welfare social cooperatives.
Seonwoo also enjoys watching movies, reading novels, listening to podcasts, and exploring various international film festivals, bookshops and architecture in small towns while travelling.
