Dr Noel Chung is a Research Assistant on the Smart Forests project. She was formerly a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Informed by her time working on the design side of data analytics software, she is interested in how different groups of people make sense of, collaborate with, or reappropriate digital technologies. Her doctoral project explores how app-enabled food delivery enacts distinctive mobilities and materialises as infrastructural practices of smart city-making.

Prior to undertaking her PhD, Noel worked in management consulting in Seoul, analytics consulting and technology in Seoul and London, and humanitarian aid in Nairobi. She holds a MSc in Media, Communication and Development from the LSE and a BA in Management from Peking University.

Publications

Chung, Noel. “Friction-free cities and the rise of contactless and robotised delivery infrastructure.” City (4 June 2025). DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2025.2506325.

Hamilton-Jones, Phoebe, Jennifer Gabrys, Michelle Westerlaken, Yuti Ariani Fatimah, Trishant Simlai, and Noel Chung. Community-led Forest Technologies: A Smart Forests Interim Report. 18 February 2025. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.115999.

Chung, Noel. 2024. “Thinking Food Delivery Platforms Infrastructurally: The Practices and Politics of Baemin's Infrastructuralisation in Seoul.” New Technology, Work and Employment (11 October). doi:10.1111/ntwe.12311.

Chung, Noel. 2024. “Connected, Programmed, and Immobilised: A Mobile Ethnography of Platform-Mediated Food Delivery in Seoul.” Mobilities 19 (4): 573–92. doi:10.1080/17450101.2024.2327845.