Jin-Sun Yoon

Jin-Sun Yoon (Teaching Professor) joined the faculty of UVic in the School of Child and Youth Care in 2002.

She has a passion for teaching and a commitment to being engaged and connected to practice in the community. The opportunity to influence front-line practitioners and enhancing their impact on communities of care is taken up as “serious business” and a real honour, responsibility, and privilege.

Jin-Sun’s educational and career journey in child and youth care is unorthodox, broad and interdisciplinary that includes work with children in their early years, mental health, human rights, at-risk youth, single parent families, immigrant and refugees, seniors, International students, racialized, queer, and Indigenous individuals and communities. Her divergent experience has naturally led to intersectional practice as her theoretical and practice orientation.

In her teaching, Jin-Sun inspires students to have the courage to incorporate social justice, community activism and advocacy to support the needs of children, youth and families. Her commitment is demonstrated, in part, through her many years of leadership and support to feminist grassroots award-winning organizations such as antidote: Multiracial and Indigenous Girls and Women’s Network. Her leadership has involved participation as an invited council member of the Vancouver Island Regional Advisory Council and the Ethno-Cultural Advisory Council for the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development.

Internationally, she has worked with the University College Copenhagen on inter-professional projects. Born in South Korea and raised in North Delta BC, her insights into ethnic identity development as a racialized minority in Canada was the focus of her graduate work at the University of British Columbia and continues in her applied research and praxis.

Jin-Sun is a parent of two biracial youth who have given her many gifts of insight and humility. She is an active leader in many social justice and diversity initiatives both in the School of Child and Youth Care and as Chair of the Academic Women’s Caucus at UVic among many other committees for social justice, diversity, inclusion, and equity. Jin-Sun’s tireless work at UVic, the larger Victoria community, provincially, nationally and internationally has resulted in winning the Faculty of Human and Social Development Teaching Excellence Award in 2011 and the Harry Hickman Award of Teaching Excellence in 2014 for her teaching and educational leadership and teaching scholarship. In 2015, she was one of ten recipients of the prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowship from the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Research interests

Intersectional diversity training, cultural identity development, racialized settler/Indigenous relations.