معرفی
Dr Jeongeun Park is a Research Fellow in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex, where she joined in October 2022. She is a key member of the ReThink programme, a 3.5-year multidisciplinary research project funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), examining mental health and educational trajectories of care-experienced children and young people across two life transitions through longitudinal analysis of national administrative data in England and Wales.
Her educational background includes:
- PhD in Social Psychology, Education, and Quantitative Methods, University of Bristol, UK
- MSc in Psychology of Education (British Psychological Society Accredited), University of Bristol, UK
- BA in Children's Welfare & Studies, Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, South Korea
Dr Park's research is driven by a passion for understanding human development in disadvantaged or at-risk groups, with a particular focus on care-experienced children and young people. She employs interdisciplinary approaches integrating life course, psychological, and sociological perspectives to investigate inequalities in developmental, educational, and mental health outcomes. Her methodological expertise lies in longitudinal statistical analysis of complex population data using advanced techniques such as multilevel and structural equation modeling. She is committed to producing knowledge with direct theoretical, policy, and practical implications for improving youth outcomes.
Her recent publications (2022-2025) demonstrate a cohesive trajectory examining mental health and educational challenges among vulnerable youth through rigorous quantitative analysis. She consistently leverages large administrative and cohort datasets to uncover systemic barriers and developmental pathways, with increasing emphasis on participatory methods as evidenced by her 2025 "Empowered Inquiry" project that directly involves care-experienced young people in research design. Her work bridges advanced statistics with real-world policy applications in child welfare systems.
Dr Park has been recognized with the following scientific award:
- UKRI MRC AMHDM Early Career Researcher Networking and Knowledge Dissemination Award (2024)
As an educator, Dr Park has supervised undergraduate and master's dissertations at the Universities of Warwick and Bristol while teaching courses on inequalities and quantitative methods. Her research is supported by multiple competitive grants:
- 2025: University of Sussex Researcher-led Initiatives (RLIs) Fund (£1,000) for "Empowered Inquiry: Collaborating with Care-experienced Children and Young People to Consolidate a Quantitative Research Proposal" (Principal Investigator)
- 2024: UKRI Medical Research Council AMHDM Early Career Researcher Award (£14,225) for "Speaking Across Lines: An ECR Symposium on Diverse Ways of Collaborative Working in Interdisciplinary Adolescent Mental Health Research" (Principal Investigator)
- 2022: University of Bristol Internal Call (£9,732) for "Developing a developmental psychology research culture: identity, collaboration and practice" (Co-investigator)
Dr Park is an integral member of the ReThink programme team, a collaborative effort co-led by Prof Lisa Holmes (University of Sussex) and Prof Rachel Hiller (UCL). This multidisciplinary consortium includes experts in social work, psychology, and statistics who work directly with care-experienced young people, local authorities, and third-sector organizations to ensure research is grounded in community needs and translates into actionable interventions for vulnerable youth.
