Sojun Park, Center for International Studies: IP and trade

Sojun Park, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT's Center for International Studies, has focused his work on how intellectual property rules influence international trade while actively mentoring students in seminars and research projects. His research investigates the effects of IP regimes on firms, markets and policy choices, and he pairs that analysis with classroom engagement and campus events to connect students to ongoing research.

Park's projects bring together comparative case studies and quantitative trade analysis to examine where IP rules raise or lower barriers to cross-border exchange. He looks at how national patent and copyright regimes interact with trade agreements and how those interactions affect access to technologies and the incentives for innovation. That work involves tracing legal provisions, mapping policy changes, and analyzing trade flows to measure observable impacts.

He has collaborated with faculty across political economy, law and development studies, and he situates his findings in debates about market access, standards-setting, and technology transfer. Park frames several of his papers around concrete policy levers, asking which provisions in trade treaties shape firms' choices to license, litigate or relocate production. Those angles are intended to make the research useful to academic audiences and to students considering careers in trade policy or international law.

Research and student engagement

Teaching and mentorship are central to Park's approach. He runs seminars that combine recent scholarship on trade and IP with hands-on assignments using trade datasets and legal texts. Students work on short research projects that model trade outcomes under alternative IP regimes, and several of those projects have fed into conference presentations and collaborative manuscripts.

Beyond courses, Park organizes informal reading groups and workshops that bring together graduate students from economics, political science and law. Those events aim to create a shared vocabulary for discussing technical topics such as patent harmonization, compulsory licensing and cross-border enforcement. Park emphasizes applied methods, guiding students through empirical strategies and source materials so they can evaluate policy claims independently.

On the policy side, he seeks to translate research findings into formats accessible to nonacademic audiences. That has included public seminars and briefings that summarize how specific treaty clauses can alter incentives for firms in different sectors. Park positions those efforts as part of training the next generation of analysts who will work in government, NGOs or multinational organizations.

Why it matters

Park's combination of focused research on intellectual property and hands-on student mentorship helps bridge theory and practice in international trade studies. By training students to work with legal texts and trade data, his work strengthens the pipeline of analysts capable of evaluating trade agreements and advising policymakers. That practical orientation changes how academic research feeds into policy debates on IP and cross-border commerce.