Dr Sunwoo Ryu
BSc, MPhil, DPhil
Expertise
I am a Lecturer in Social Policy at the School for Policy Studies with expertise in family and child-related policies in the comparative context between and within East Asia and Europe.
Current positions
Lecturer in Social Policy
School for Policy Studies
Contact
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Biography
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE While pursuing my degrees, I worked as a Research Analyst (2016, 2017) at the Korea Labour Institute where I conducted research on European labour market policies. During my time at the University of Oxford, I worked as a Research Assistant (2021-2022) and a Postdoctoral Researcher (2022-2023), carrying out studies on diverse family-related policies in EU and OECD countries. This research experience has led me to work closely with government-sponsored policy research institutes in Korea, especially the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, in order to promote the country’s policy learning.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE I began my teaching career at the University of Oxford, working as a Tutor (2019-2023) in Social Policy, Social Policy in a Comparative Context, Family Policy, Understanding Public Policy, and Political Sociology. Based on my teaching experience and the completion of multiple training programmes for teaching in higher education, I was awarded the Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2022.
Research interests
My general academic interests lie in the field of child- and family-related policies, especially regarding the following facets:
- Modalities of family policy practices in terms of the nexus of relations between the state, the market and the family, and among family members
- Key driving forces of family policy reforms (e.g. declining fertility and population ageing, women’s increasing participation in the labour market and the resulting care deficit, changing socio-cultural values and gender norms, and other global social policy exigencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic)
- Discursive constructions and the making of policies for families with children
- Policy impacts on family lives and experiences
In terms of regional interest, my scholarly focus is on East Asian societies compared to European societies, especially in regard to:
- Politics surrounding social welfare since the democratic transition in the face of endogenous pressures and exogenous shocks
- The legacy of Confucianism and developmentalism and its impact on policy reforms
These academic interests led me to develop my doctoral research project (2017-2022), which problematised the nature and politics of childcare policy reforms in 21st century South Korea in the face of precipitously changing socio-demographic and political environments. My two postdoctoral research projects (2022-2023) moved beyond East Asia and probed child- and family policies in Eurasia and other Western welfare states in a cross-national comparative context. The first research project (Child-related Policy During COVID-19) built new databases on and investigated child-related policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in 40 EU and/or OECD countries in regard to six areas during 2020 (income support, food-related provisions, childcare, education, parental leave and health). In the second research project (rEUsilience)—that aims to understand families’ differential capacities to respond to socio-economic and other risks in different European countries—my contribution was focused on the analysis of the constellation of cash benefits for families.
For more details about these research projects and others, please see my publication record.
Publications
Recent publications
01/11/2023Child-related Policies in the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 40 Countries
Child-related Policies in the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 40 Countries
Child-related Social Policies in Europe during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Journal of Social Policy
Teaching
- Key Concepts, Theories and Ideologies of Social Policy (TB1)
- Understanding Public Policy (TB1)
- Comparative and International Social Policy (TB2)
- Theorising Social Welfare (TB2)
As a subject, social policy is concerned with the ways societies meet human needs for wellbeing and provides a lens through which learners observe social issues. From this perspective, simple, mechanical transmission of subject knowledge to my students cannot appropriately allow them to problematise real-life social issues, understand the complexities behind them, and think about potential policy solutions. My pedagogical approach is therefore focused on developing students’ capacity to critically approach the existing literature and construct their own forms of reasoning, rather than transferring my knowledge to them. I am aiming to further develop my pedagogical knowledge in enhancing inclusiveness in higher education and decolonisation of the curriculum.