Yoon Hwan Shin has taught comparative politics, Southeast Asian politics, and political anthropology at Sogang University, Seoul, for twenty-seven years. He obtained his Ph.D. from Yale in 1989 with a study on the origin and formation of big business in Indonesia. He has served as Director of the Institute for East Asian Studies (SIEAS) at the university since 2001 until now. He is a founding co-chairperson in the editorial board of TRaNS: Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia, published by the Cambridge University Press. He is also a founding member of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies (KASEAS), where he is currently serving as President, as well as the Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (KISEAS), the two most important associations of scholars specializing in Southeast Asian Studies.