BA Anthropology and Geography (First Class) University College London, UKPhD Sociology and Social Policy, Queens University Belfast, UK MA Academic Practice (Higher Education) NUI Galway

Su-ming Khoo is Associate Professor and Head of Sociology at the University of Galway, Ireland and Visiting Professor in Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET) at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa (2022-27).

She researches, teaches and writes about human development, human rights, public goods, development alternatives, decoloniality, global activism and learning, higher education and transdisciplinarity. She is co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of  Creative Research Methods with Sophie Woodward and Harriet Shortt, publishing in September 2025 with Bristol University Press.

Key words: Human rights and development, Creative research methods, Higher Education, transdiciplinarity, Human Development and Capabilities Approach, Decolonial social science, Globalizations, Development Alternatives, Global Public Goods, New Public Goods Theory, ecology, feminism, Public Sociology, development education, progressive education.

My research and teaching promote knowledge and enquiry concerning different meanings of globalization and development and the contestation of those meanings along North-South lines. It addresses the challenge of development after post-development and from the perspective of human rights. My research and course material engages with development theory and political economy of development, with an emphasis on alternative approaches including human development, human rights and sustainable development. I have a strong research interest in, and commitment, to Public Sociology, critical higher education studies, higher education for development and global educational ethics. From 2019-2022 I was Principal Investigator on IRC-COALESCE BCAUSE project :Building Collaborative Approaches to University Strategies against Exclusion in Ireland and Africa: pedagogies for quality Higher Education and inclusive global citizenship. I am a strongly inter-and trans-disciplinary scholar, with a particular interest in bridging the fields of human rights, development, and education. I address issues of active citizenship, cultural difference, decolonization, ecology, democratization of knowledge and advocacy and activism, with a focus on humanistic and ecological development alternatives.

I chair the Socio-Economic Impact Cluster of the Ryan Institute for multidisciplinary environmental research.  My teaching and research are strongly integrated, aiming to share my own research interests and findings as well as to train students as future researchers and contributors to knowledge. 

My teaching interests are predominantly in the intersection of development and human rights, critical studies of international development, postcolonial and interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches and global advocacy and activism. I am interested in developing and training researchers in creative, collaborative, transdisciplinary methods and ethics. 

Taught courses:

Postgraduate MA Gender Globalization and Rights: GG 6103 Human Rights and Development

MA Public - Advocacy and Activism: FA551 Social and Political Context of International Public Advocacy and Activism

Undergraduate BA (Final Year) SP404 Development and Change BA (Final Year)