Soo Ryon Yoon is a performance researcher and dance historian. She is currently a National Research Foundation Academic Research Professor at the Institute for East Asian Studies at Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, South Korea.

Yoon’s research on racial and gender politics of contemporary Korean culture and performance has been published in a number of venues. She is the co-editor (with Emily Wilcox) of Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method (Routledge 2023) and Lateral’s CcRrrC (Cultural Constructions of Race and Racism Research Collective) East Asia section (2024) with Asako Masubuchi and Roberto Castillo. Her latest article, “Alvin Ailey and Korean Dance” (Dance Chronicle 47.3) received an Honorable Mention from the Dance Studies Association for the Gertrude Lippincott Award.

In addition to her academic work, Yoon collaborates closely with artists as a dramaturg, researcher, and translator. Most recently, she was a research advisor for Ayoung Kim’s Body^n (2025), a new commissioned performance at the Performa Biennial. She was also a dramaturg for Boreum Kang’s theatre production of Puriyeonseub - Practicing Freedom (2024) at ArKo Arts Theatre, featuring Cameroonian-French pansori singer Mafo Laure; a research/translation contributor to Brown (2022), the choreographic co-production between the Hong Kong-based City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) and Korean choreographer Kim Jaeduk; and a translator for To Die as A Fish (2023), a play by siren eun young jung.

She has taught Korean and East Asian performance and cultural studies courses at Northwestern University, Yale University, Lingnan University, Ewha Womans University, Sungkonghoe University, and Yonsei University. She was a CEAS postdoctoral associate at Yale University and an assistant professor in Cultural Studies at Lingnan University.

She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.