Dr. Yvonne Su is the Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University. An interdisciplinary scholar researching transnational issues, her expertise spans forced migration, queer migration, climate change adaptation and climate (im)mobilities. Her research adopts a policy-oriented and community-based approach, undertaking regionally contextualised social science research across the Global South, focusing on Latin America and the ASEAN region.

Dr. Su has secured over $7.6 million in external research funding. Her work is supported by multiple New Frontiers in Research Fund grants comparing climate change adaptation in Bangladesh, Ghana, the Philippines, the Canadian Arctic, and Alaska. She has also won multiple Social Science and Humanities Research Council grants for multi-disciplinary research in Brazil, Colombia, and the Philippines.

In Latin America, since 2019, Dr. Su has been conducting high-risk research on a concept she coined “intersecting precarity” - the combination of homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, and gender-based violence - experienced by marginalized groups such as asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented migrants. She examines this in the case of Venezuelan LGBTQ+ migrants and refugees in the unstable border cities of Pacaraima, Boa Vista, and Manaus in Brazil and Cúcuta in Colombia. 

In the ASEAN region, Dr. Su has spent over a decade examining the socio-ecological impacts of climate change, focusing on how social inequalities shape communities’ adaptive capacities and disaster responses. Her research on Indigenous knowledge systems and disaster risk reduction has been cited in major reports, including the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Her latest research agenda takes a transdisciplinary approach to critically analyzing the social, ecological and health implications of critical mineral mining on indigenous communities in Southeast Asia (Philippines and Indonesia) and Latin America (Peru and Ecuador). Working with a transdisciplinary team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Lingnan University, Universidad San Francisco de Quito and Universidad de Ingenieria y Tecnologia, they have been developing an easy-to-make colorimeter to detect toxins in soil and water samples so that Indigenous communities can understand how mineral extraction is polluting their environment.

As an interdisciplinary migration expert with lived experiences of migration, Dr. Su is committed to critically engaged research that examines contemporary transboundary migration challenges through a Global South lens, centring marginalized communities and advancing the decolonization of research and knowledge production. 

Education:

PhD, Political Science and International Development, University of Guelph
MSc, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, University of Oxford

Fellowships and Appointments:

Expert, UNHCR, Global Recommendations to Prevent Loss of Nationality and Statelessness in the Context of Climate Change
Visiting Fellow, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford
Fellow, International Migration Institute, University of Amsterdam