Yunju Nam is Associate Professor at School of Social Work at UB.  Her research interests include poverty, economic security, wealth disparities, financial capability, immigration, and social policy. She is particularly interested in social policies and programs in promoting economic success and equality among vulnerable populations, such as low-income families, racial and ethnic minorities, and immigrants and refugees. Her current research projects include refugees’ economic success and public assistance program participation in Buffalo and Erie County, New York.

Yunju Nam joined the School of Social Work in 2010 as an assistant professor from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at St. Louis’ Washington University. Now an associate professor in the School, Nam’s teaching interests include social welfare policies and service, social policy analysis and evaluation, research methods and statistics. Complementing her research foci on social policies and social and economic development, socioeconomic inequality and poverty, asset-building and immigrants and aging, Nam recently served as principle investigator for “Developing and Evaluating a Financial Capacity Building Program for Low-income Older Asian Immigrants,” funded by UB’s Civic Engagement Grant Development Fellowship Program, and “Financial Need Assessment among Older Asian Immigrant Participants in Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP)” at the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA).

Nam received a PhD in Social Work and Social Science (Political Science) and an MA in Political Science from the University of Michigan; she also holds an MSW from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Literature from Seoul National University. In 2013, she earned Best Poster Award at the 20th IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Seoul, Korea; Nam was also honored with an Excellence in Research Award from the UB School of Social Work in 2013 in addition to being a 2012 nominee for the SSW Faculty of the Year Award.

Phone: (716) 645-1255.