Assistant Professor Meicen Sun was selected as a 2024 Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) Emerging Scholar and presented her research at the PTC Annual Conference, which was held from January 21-24 in Honolulu, Hawaii. PTC is a global, nonprofit organization promoting the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Pacific Rim. The Emerging Scholar Program recognizes exceptional, rising scholars in the field of ICT.
In her talk, "Three Worlds of Power in Cyberspace," Sun discussed her research on the sovereign state's control of its Internet infrastructure, such as the regulation of service providers. According to Sun, findings show that neither democracy nor economic development accounts for the variation across states in cyberspace control. This suggests the presence of important new variables that may explain, among other things, the persistent tension among democracies over Internet governance and digital sovereignty, she said.
Sun's research examines the political economy of information, the geopolitics of data, and information policy. Her writings have appeared in several academic and policy outlets, including Foreign Policy Analysis, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, the Asian Development Bank Institute, and The Diplomat. Sun holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is an affiliated faculty with MIT FutureTech.