Profile

I am a PhD candidate in Sociology. I studied politics at the University of Edinburgh for my BA, and obtained a MA with Distinction in International Cultural Policy & Management from the University of Warwick. Before joining the Department of Sociology at Warwick, I have worked at the World Heritage Centre of UNESCO, the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding under the auspices of UNESCO, and researched for the Korea Information Society Development Institute and the Cultural Heritage Administration of the Republic of Korea.

Throughout my career path, I have worked on Official Development Assistance in cultural fields, UNESCO Creative Cities Network, Global Citizenship Education, the contextual analysis of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the case studies of national laws concerning protecting World Heritage sites.

Research Interests

The sociology of policy knowledge, the collective knowledge in the legal instruments of UNESCO, the epistemology and ontology of culture and art creators, the art of Artificial Intelligence, the interaction between humans and Artificial Intelligence

I am working on how UNESCO can adapt the issues of the art of Artificial Intelligence to UNESCO's policy ambit. By focusing on UNESCO's concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind that lies in the humanistic perspective to acknowledge the agent of culture, the current research aims at exploring how UNESCO’s legal instruments can recognise Artificial Intelligence, not only as a tool of human culture, but also as a new agent of culture.

My supervisors are Professor Steve Fuller from the Department of Sociology and Dr David Wright from the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies.

Publications

Park, S. (2023) The Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage with Generative Artificial Intelligence: Practical and Ethical Issues, UNESCO ICHCAP ICH Courier, Volume 55, pp. 16-17. Available at: https://ichcourier.unesco-ichcap.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ICH-Courier-54high_eng.pdf 

Bell, D. & Oakley, K. (2022) Cultural Policy (Translated from English to Korean by Jo, D. J. & Park, S.). Myung-In Publishers (Original work published in 2015, Routledge)

Park, S. (2022) The Ambivalence in the Ambiguity of UNESCO's Cultural Policy Remit: a Structural Description of the Common Heritage of Mankind in the Cultural Diversity Convention, International Journal of Cultural Policy. (open access).

Conference Presentations

Park, S. (2022) "UNESCO’s Problematisation of Artificial Intelligence (AI): New Policy Agendas about the Common Heritage of Mankind". 12th International Conference on Cultural Policy Research, 19-23 September 2022, University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Park, S. (2021) "Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) be an Artist? Possible Types of the AI Authorship in Art". Annual CIM (Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies) Postgraduate Conference, 2nd July 2021.

Park, S. (2021) "UNESCO's Historical Understanding of the Common Heritage of Mankind - the Scales of the
Human Agent". Annual ESRC Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership Conference (Panel C: Research Agendas, Going Beyond the ‘Human’), 23rd June 2021.

Podcast

Humanity 8.0, Generative AI & Intangible Cultural Heritage, ep.17, 18 Season 3 (13 Oct 2023): Part I, Part II

Awards

Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence 2023 (Postgraduates who teach award): Commended

The highest marked dissertation submitted to the MA in International Cultural Policy & Management in academic year 2017/2018 (Dissertation title: Understanding Ambivalence in Ambiguity of Cultural Policy – the case of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, UNESCO)

Teaching

2023/24

Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant

LP918 Culture in Global Sustainable Development (Module Convenor)

LA217 Social Theory of Law

SO254 Media, Audiences and Social Change

IM954 Generative AI: Histories, Techniques, Cultures and Impacts

2022/23

Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant

LP906 International Cultural Policy (Module Convenor)

LA217 Social Theory of Law

SO344 Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Intellectuals

2021/22

Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant

SO363 Sociology of End Times

LA217 Social Theory of Law

Guest Lecturer

The Paradigms of Culture - the Art of Artificial Intelligence as an Anomaly to UNESCO

(IP102 Science, Society, and the Media, Liberal Arts, School for Cross-faculty Studies)