June Yeoreum Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of emerging technologies, labor, and policy. June is completing her Ph.D. at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University (expected May 2026).
June’s doctoral dissertation, Computational Intelligence That Runs on Rice: Stories of the Undervalued Human Labor That Sustains Emerging Technologies in Digitalizing Vietnam, is a multi-method ethnography of labor and technology in Vietnam that examines how digital transformation policies are implemented, interpreted, and contested in everyday life. Through fieldwork conducted in sites ranging from an electric vehicle factory to a smart city owned by the largest private corporation in Vietnam, her research foregrounds underrecognized forms of labor that sustain emerging technological systems. By centering workers’ lived experiences, June investigates how technological infrastructures reorganize labor processes, redistribute accountability, and reshape human agency within systems of governance.
June’s recent research on AI transformation policy and governance, labor restructuring, and AI-mediated social environments is forthcoming in the journal Science, Technology, & Human Values. She has also published in an edited collection on the history of technology transfer policy and information infrastructure development between Korea and Vietnam in The Smartification of Everything (University of Toronto Press, 2025). Across her research, June contributes to debates on AI governance, labor regulation, and institutional accountability in rapidly digitalizing societies.
June grounds her work in her positionality as a Korean-born, U.S.-trained scholar working across Vietnam, Korea, and the United States. June holds an M.A. in Art History and Criticism (with a certificate in Media, Art, Culture, and Technology) from Stony Brook University, and a B.A. in Journalism and Art History from Ewha Womans University.