Rate My Professor Yunji Kim

Yunji Kim serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle, Australia, since May 2023. She is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University since September 2021. Kim earned her Doctor of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University in 2017, with a thesis titled Local Government Revenues and Services after the Great Recession. She holds a Master of Public Policy from Seoul National University in 2011, where her thesis developed a Community Well-being Index for Korea, and a Bachelor of Arts in Government, cum laude, from Georgetown University in 2009. Her research focuses on public finance, local government services, local governance, community development, and community wellbeing indicators. Kim investigates local government responses to fiscal stress, including pragmatic municipalism versus austerity urbanism, the impacts of privatization and intermunicipal cooperation, and how local services influence resident attachment, participation, and length of residency.

Previous roles include Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University from 2019 to 2021 and Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2017 to 2019. Notable publications include Community Wellbeing and Public Management Theory: How Theory can Explain Pandemic Responses (International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2025, with Joseph Drew); The Role of Local Governments in South Korea’s COVID-19 Response (Public Administration and Development, 2023); Pragmatic Municipalism or Austerity Urbanism? Understanding Local Government Responses to Fiscal Stress (Local Government Studies, 2021); Blocking the Progressive City: How State Preemptions Undermine Labor Rights in the US (Urban Studies, 2020); Limits of Fiscal Federalism: How Narratives of Local Government Inefficiency Facilitate Scalar Dumping in New York State (Environment and Planning A, 2019); and Economy Doesn’t Buy Community Wellbeing: a Study of Factors Shaping Community Wellbeing in South Korea (International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2018). She delivered the lecture International Perspectives on Local Government Financial Sustainability at the University of Newcastle. Kim's scholarship informs policies on local fiscal sustainability and community wellbeing across the United States, Korea, and Australia.