Dr Su Yeone Jeon
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dr Su Yeone Jeon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow whose primary research lies at the intersection of international development and international political economy. Specifically, her work explores how the global regulatory landscape influences the development and innovation capacities of latecomer countries and firms, and the strategies they adopt to challenge and rebalance an uneven playing field.

She is currently working with Dr Peg Murray-Evans on the collaborative UK–South-East Asia Vaccine Manufacturing Research Hub project, which aims to foster a sustainable vaccine manufacturing ecosystem in South-East Asia. The project focuses on building knowledge and capacity around the political dynamics of local vaccine production in the region—particularly how manufacturers, states, and regional organisations can sustain and expand South-East Asia’s role in global vaccine manufacturing value chains.

She is also preparing her book manuscript, which uses the South Korean pharmaceutical and Argentine agri-biotech industries as case studies. The book examines how latecomer countries and firms navigate what she terms the "global regulatory chain"—a transnational chain of regulations that shape multiple stages of production and distribution, thereby influencing developmental trajectories in the era of frontier technology sectors.

Su Yeone received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Virginia. Prior to that, she earned a Master of International Affairs (MIA) and an MSc in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, and a BSc in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University.