Sowon Park

Hi! I am an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University.

My research interests include international security, U.S. foreign policy, legislative behavior, public opinion, and political psychology.

In my research, I examine the structure of foreign policy preferences among U.S. legislators and the mass public, with particular attention to the ideological nature of these preferences. Using a range of methodologies—including machine learning, text-as-data, survey experiments, and statistical methods—I study how the interaction between foreign policy ideology and partisanship shapes the behavior of domestic actors and its implications for interstate bargaining. My dissertation was supported by the Albert Gallatin Fellowship from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.

I received my Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Virginia, where I also served as a Graduate Research Fellow at the National Security Policy Center in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy (2022-24), the Quantitative Collaborative (2021-22), and the Democratic Statecraft Lab (2020-22) at the Miller Center.

Email: sowon.park@duke.edu