Irene Hyangseon Ahn

Irene Hyangseon Ahn is a legal sociologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University. Trained in comparative-historical and ethnographic methods, her research examines legal mobilization, victimhood, and transitional justice in East Asia and beyond. She is particularly interested in how marginalized communities seek justice through legal institutions, often in the face of historical silence or stigma. Her current book project, Between Thick and Thin Reconciliations, explores how societies reconcile past historical injustices, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Taiwan and South Korea. She was a Predoctoral Fellow at Academia Sinica from 2022 to 2023. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and Law and Social Inquiry.