Hojung Kim is an assistant professor in the School of Interior Architecture at the University of Tennessee and co-founder of the MM Lab. His research takes a transdisciplinary approach to material practices, examining their cultural, ecological, and economic dimensions. Central to his work is a critical inquiry into how centralized systems of manufacturing exert homogenizing pressures—displacing vernacular techniques rooted in Indigenous knowledge, marginalizing communities, and degrading local ecologies. Focusing particularly on Southeast Asia, Kim explores how regional and ancestral craft practices endure, adapt, or are disrupted within globalized design and production networks. He positions material making not as a neutral act, but as a powerful site of ecological resistance, cultural resilience, and transformative agency. Through the MM Lab’s collaborative fieldwork and hands-on experimentation, Kim investigates how inherited craft traditions can offer restorative, place-based alternatives to extractive and technocratic systems of production. Prior to his academic appointment, Kim worked as an architect, project manager, and designer at internationally recognized firms in Los Angeles and New York.