Xiangming Chen - Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies

Xiangming Chen was appointed founding Dean and Director of Trinity’s new Center for Urban and Global Studies (CUGS) and the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Sociology and International Studies on July 1, 2007.  Reporting directly to Dean Rena Fraden, Chen leads CUGS in developing and strengthening meaningful and synergistic linkages of teaching, research, and service in urban and global studies, broadly defined, between Trinity’s academic programs and its various forms of experiential learning on campus, in Hartford, and globally.

A native of Beijing, China, Chen graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University and received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University.  From 1989 to 2007, he served as Assistant to Full Professor of Sociology with adjunct appointments in Political Science and Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he also directed the International Studies, Asian Studies, and Sociology graduate programs.  He also holds the positions of Distinguished Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and honorary research fellows at the Institute of Economics of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.  Chen is currently serving on the editorial board of the journal City & Community.  He was elected to and served as President of the North American Chinese Sociologists Association during 1998-2000 and on the Council for the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association during 2002-2005.
 
Chen received fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Sociological Association, the Open Society Institute, and Harvard University. He is the co-author of The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective (2003) and the author of As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim (2005).  His edited book Shanghai Rising: Global Impact, State Power, and Local Transformations in the World’s Most Dynamic Mega-City will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2008.  His articles have appeared in major urban studies and international social science journals, as well as in over a dozen edited books.  His research focuses on the comparative and transnational facets of global-urban relations in the local and regional contexts of China and Asia.