Hyun Ok Park

Hyun Ok Park is a Professor of Sociology at York University. Before joining York in 2007, she taught at the University of Michigan and New York University. With archival and ethnographic research, her research investigates global capitalism in colonial, industrial, and financial forms, democracy, socialism, and post-socialist transition, especially in terms of the experience of laborers, ethnic and diasporic minorities, and refugees. She engages with the critical theory of modernity and otherness, postcolonialism, and transnational and global history, to which she contributes with her anchored sociological inquiry of capitalism and social change.

She is the Project Director of “Korea in the World, the World in Korean Studies,” a collaborative project of Korean studies scholars at York, eastern Canada, and the US, which is funded by the Core University Program for Korean Studies grant (1.1M, 2018-2023) from the Academy of Korean Studies. She is the Director of the Korean Office for Research and Education at York set up by the grant.

She was a Member of the School of Historical Studies (Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth fellow, 2005-2006) and a Visitor in the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). Her research has been also supported by other fellowships, including the John. D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, and Academy of Korean Studies’ senior research grant. She sits on the editorial boards of Economy and Society (Seoul, Korea) and Global Perspectives (University of California Press). She also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS).

Research Specialties:

Hyun Ok Park

Full Professor of Sociology

hopark@yorku.ca