Dr. Hye-Jeong Seo

PHD FELLOW GRADUATE   |   Global Change Center

VT Graduate May 2024  •  School of Public and International Affairs

Advisor: Dr. Todd Schenk

seohj@vt.edu

Dr. Seo is an Associate Research Fellow in the Department of Disaster, Risk & Safety Management for the Korea Institute of Public Administration in Seoul, South Korea. 

Hye-Jeong successfully defended her PhD dissertation in spring 2024. Dr. Seo was in the Planning, Governance, and Globalization program at Virginia Tech. She is interested in environmental risk communication for public dispute resolution and decision-making. Her research focused on how to navigate the complex dynamics between science and decision-making for better and more legitimate consensus building in environmental planning and policy.

Hye-Jeong finished her B.S. in Urban Engineering from the Pusan National University in 2011, graduating with the President’s list and summa cum laude honors. She studied environmental and hazard mitigation planning at the same university and received her M.S. in 2013.

After graduating with her M.S., Hye-Jeong worked at the Korea Environment Institute for a few years, researching participatory methods for climate change adaptation planning, developing climate change risk assessment tools, and facilitating participatory processes for community climate change adaptation. Through these research experiences at the government policy institute, she realized the rupture between environmental science and public policy decision-making. This relationship is complicated by various issues, including the range of scientific information available from various domains, challenges to the credibility of science, social justice concerns, ethical issues, democratic standards, and questions of procedural legitimacy. She decided to pursue interdisciplinary doctoral studies in the Planning, Governance, and Globalization program at Virginia Tech to seek a better policy approach for environmental risk communication and decision-making.

While in the Interfaces of Global Change program, Hye-Jeong enjoyed interacting with fellows and program faculty from diverse disciplines and sharing her experiences and knowledge rooted in environmental planning and policy with them.

Last updated December 2024.