Dr. Haruki Eda, Ph.D.

Dr. Haruki Eda (he/they) joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in 2023 as an Assistant Professor. His expertise includes social theory, queer of color critique, decolonizing methodologies, and feminist pedagogy. Dr. Eda is an award-winning educator who previously taught sociology, Asian American Studies, Asian studies, and English composition at Rutgers University. As a third-generation Zainichi Korean (stateless Korean postcolonial exiles, genocide and war refugees, and their descendants in/from Japan), Haruki's academic and community duties center on social and economic justice, cultural survival, and peace-building in the Trans-Pacific region. He has been involved in the Korea Education and Exposure Program, Japan Multicultural Relief Fund, and "Comfort Women" Justice Coalition, among other transnational grassroots projects. 

Two basic questions drive Dr. Eda's current book projects: how does cultural identity evolve and regenerate through war? And what is the role of cultural identity in the age of ecological crises? His first book project, Queer Unification: Community and Healing in the Korean Diaspora, interrogates ethnicity, race, and nationalism in East Asia and North America, demonstrating how women and queer/non-binary people of Korean descent politicize their diasporic communities into alternative spaces of belonging. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic involvement, he draws attention to the lived experiences of queer diasporic subjects, including Korean Americans, transnational Korean adoptees, and Zainichi Koreans, as they cultivate radical kinship to animate Korean re/unification as an ongoing practice of geopolitical healing. Further connecting geopolitics to geology, his second book project explores fire, both wild and domesticated, as the material foundation of human cultures and social solidarity. Recognizing our deep relationship with fire, Pyrosociology proposes a praxis for exercising collective agency in the era of division and alienation. Thinking across social and natural sciences, Haruki's research converges into his passion for fire, food, and forestry. 

Eda, Haruki. 2020. “Archipelagic Feeling: Counter-Mapping Indigeneity and Diaspora in the Trans-Pacific.” In Stephens, Michelle and Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda (Eds.). 2020. Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. 337-360.

Eda, Haruki. 2018. “Unmaking Borders to Demilitarize Peace: A Zainichi Korean Perspective.” Social Text Periscope: Korea and Demilitarized Peace. December 21, 2018. https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/unmaking-borders-to-demilitarize-peace-a-zainichi-korean-experience/ 

Eda, Haruki. 2015. “Disaster Justice Feat. Research Justice: Mobilizing Grassroots Knowledge Against Disaster Nationalism in Japan.”* In Jolivétte, Andrew J. (Ed.). 2015. Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change. Bristol: Policy Press. Pp. 95-108.

Ph.D. in Sociology, Rutgers University, 2022.

M.A. in Sociology, Rutgers University, 2015.

M.Sc. in Gender, Globalisation and Development, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012.

B.A. in Sociology, San Francisco State University, 2010.