• Date: September 12th, Friday, 2025, 12:00 – 13:30
• Location: Room 303, SNUAC (Bldg. 101)

Since 2022, the Asia–Africa Center at SNUAC has been holding the SNU Africa Seminar series on a monthly basis. The seminar series aims to foster in-depth understanding of Africa and promote scholarly exchange by inviting experts on Africa from diverse academic disciplines and professional backgrounds.

On Friday, September 12, 2025, the 27th SNU Africa Seminar will host Professor Miseon Park of the Graduate School of International Agricultural Technology at Seoul National University, who will give a lecture and lead a discussion on the theme “West African Forests and Cocoa.” In this seminar, Professor Park will highlight the ecological, social, and economic roles of forest communities in Africa, drawing on fieldwork she conducted last year and this year on forest restoration and agroforestry practices in West Africa. In particular, she will examine forest management practices surrounding cocoa cultivation, community livelihood strategies, and how agroforestry can contribute to climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation. Participants will gain wide-ranging insights into how forests and agriculture interact in West Africa to pursue sustainable development, and what implications and challenges these dynamics pose for forestry policy and international cooperation strategies.

Professor Miseon Park teaches and conducts research at the Graduate School of International Agricultural Technology, Seoul National University, focusing on international forest policy, agroforestry, global forest governance, and policies on climate change and biodiversity. She earned her B.A. in Forest Resources at Seoul National University, completed her M.A. in Environmental Education at the same university, and received her Ph.D. in Forest Policy at the University of Göttingen in Germany. She serves as a board member and editorial committee member of the Korean Forest Economics Society, a member of the Korea Forest Service Policy Evaluation Committee, and a member of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ Science and Technology Committee. Internationally, she has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessment reports, and as editor-in-chief of the journal Trees, Forests and People, among other academic and policy roles at both domestic and international levels.