Rate My Professor Sung-Young Kim

Sung-Young Kim is Associate Professor and Chair of the Discipline of Politics and International Relations in the Macquarie School of Social Sciences at Macquarie University, a position he has held since 2023. He joined Macquarie in 2017 as Senior Lecturer in the same discipline. Previously, he was Lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, from 2012 to 2016. Kim completed his PhD in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney in 2009. He has held visiting academic positions at Seoul National University, Korea University, and Waseda University. Kim currently teaches units including International Political Economy, Australia and the Asia-Pacific Century, and Global Political Economy in the undergraduate Politics and International Relations majors as well as the Master of International Relations program. He has successfully supervised three PhD theses, eight Master of Research and Master of Philosophy projects, and nineteen Honours theses, and served as examiner for eleven PhD and Masters dissertations.

Kim's research examines the international and comparative politics of East Asia's economic transformation, with a focus on government coordination of national techno-innovation strategies in response to global competition. His studies cover the institutional basis of competitive advantage in the digital economy and, more recently, the green economy in Korea, Singapore, China, and Taiwan, under the framework of developmental environmentalism. This work has been supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (2019-2023, $301,000) and the Academy of Korean Studies (2013-2017, $854,000). Key publications include the co-authored book Developmental Environmentalism: State Ambition and Creative Destruction in East Asia's Green Energy Transition (Oxford University Press, 2023); 'Hybridized industrial ecosystems and the makings of a new developmental infrastructure in East Asia's green energy sector' (Review of International Political Economy, 2019); 'Developmental environmentalism: explaining South Korea's ambitious pursuit of green growth' (Politics and Society, 2015); and 'Transitioning from fast-follower to innovator: the institutional foundations of the Korean telecommunications sector' (Review of International Political Economy, 2012). His scholarship has garnered 378 citations and an h-index of 9. Kim has received the Best Paper for Early Career Researcher Prize (2011) and was longlisted for the Australian International Political Economy Network Journal Article Prize (2020). He serves as Deputy Editor of Asian Studies Review (since 2023), having previously been Regional Editor for Korea (2021), and as a member of the International Advisory Board for Palgrave Macmillan's Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy (since 2020). Additionally, he was a Director on the Australian Political Studies Association Executive Board (2021-2024), Treasurer of the Korean Studies Association of Australasia (2020-2023), and Chair of the 2021 APSA Annual Conference hosted by Macquarie University.