Yeryeng Choi is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Her research explores environmental racism as well as racialized and gendered emotional dynamics within social movements with a specific consideration for cultural meanings and cultural impacts of racism. For this, she has specifically looked at climate/environmental and feminist movements as well as movement organizations.
In her previous research, Choi has conducted ethnographic observations on Californian environmental/climate NGOs and interviews with climate activists. It explored how climate activists can sustain their participation to discover that guilt as much as joy and sense of belonging is a strong motivator for sustained commitment to movement organizations. Her master’s thesis project in Korea involved fieldwork with democratic movement participants, feminists, and vegans in South Korea.
Her work has been published in Journal of Korean Women’s Studies and Journal of Human Rights Studies, and her paper on how climate activists of color from the global south are refrained from expressing anger in making public climate speeches has won multiple internal and external research awards including Justice and Equity Research Paper Award (UC Irvine) and Student Paper Award for the Section of Ethnic Minorities under American Sociological Association.
Choi’s current project follows community-engaged environmental justice efforts with local NGOs in South LA region. Her another project reflects on the impact of news and entertainment consumption for women in the 1970s using the National Women’s Survey data.

Choi holds an MA in Demographic and Social Analysis from the University of California, Irvine, as well as an MA in Sociology and a BA in Sociology and English Language and Literature from Seoul National University.