Dr Jin-ho Chung

Jin-ho is Researcher in Climate Mobility at the Transport Studies Unit (TSU). His work centres on three key themes: climate-related migration/mobilities, climate change adaptation, and urban development, with a lens of political ecology.  

Jin-ho is also Research Fellow at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), supporting its Equitable Development and Migration (EDM) pillar of work. Since 2021 he has served on the editorial panel of Municipal Engineer, which covers the effect of civil engineering on local communities.

Jin-ho’s PhD research at University College London (2017) examined how two different communities in Ethiopia are responding to the need for adaptation to climate change through a study of the UNDP Small Grants Programme. He previously worked as Research Associate at TSU for the Oxford Martin School Programme on Informal Cities (2020-2022) and as Research Consultant at the University of East Anglia (2019) and the IIED (2017-2018). Prior to the PhD research, Jin-ho worked for UNDP Ethiopia and Rift Valley Institute.

Jin-ho’s current work is organised around the question of how climate change affects human mobility. Key areas of his research include climate mobility decision-making and climate migrants’ experience of shifting locations of livelihoods and socio-economic precarity in destinations. 

Jin-ho is Principal Investigator of Climate Mobility, Onward Precarity and Urban Environment (CEMENT) – a research project supported by ESRC New Investigator Grants. Commenced in 2023, CEMENT investigates family mobility/immobility practices in response to increasingly frequent drought events in Ethiopia which arise amid other social, economic and political constraints and how internal climate migrants navigate opportunities and challenges in cities.

Jin-ho’s work focuses on the interface between academia and development practice, aimed at improving the relationships between science, policy and practice. In order to have real-world impacts, his approach has been interdisciplinary and collaborative, drawing from collaborations with academics, policymakers and civil society. His PhD research findings had been presented at the UNDP Headquarters in New York and archived in the UNDP online database for the use of its country programmes. Jin-ho was featured in the video interview produced by the University of Oxford’s Social Sciences Division for the COP26 summit and recently organised the policy roundtable at the UNU-CPR in New York.

• Chung, J., Buswala, B., Keith, M. and Schwanen, T. (2022) Climate mobilities into cities: A systematic review of literature from 2011 – 2020. Urban Climate, 45, 101252. 
• Chung, J. (2023) Who defines community in community-based adaptation: Different perceptions of community between government and citizens in Ethiopia. Climate and Development, 15(2), 122-131. 
• Chung, J. (2023) Understanding Climate-Related Mobility in Contexts of Urbanization. United Nations University 
• Hou-Jones, X., Franks, P. and Chung, J. (2019) Creating enabling conditions for managing trade-offs between food production and forest conservation in Africa: Case studies from Ethiopia and Zambia. International Institute for Environment and Development. 
• Tesfaye, Z., Tigist, A., Chung, J. and Higgins, U. (2011) UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme Ethiopia 5-Year Report (2006-2010). UNDP Ethiopia. 

A full list is available via Google Scholar