Trained in urban sociology, Xiangming Chen is a comparative scholar of cities and their dwellers in all their local attributes and conditions and their global dimensions and connections. He has pursued this core research interest by addressing such critical questions as how cities and communities change or continue through the intersection between local factors and global forces, shaped or mediated by national politics and regional dynamics. He has studied Chinese urbanism within and across a variety of locales including China’s coastal megacities of Shenzhen and Shanghai with their regional environs, its interior megacities of Chongqing, Xi’an, and Wuhan with their growing global linkages, and its small cities on the China-Kazakhstan, China-Laos, China-Myanmar, and China-North Korea borders as varied cases and forms of peripheral or frontier urbanism, with comparative references to and analyses of a number of cities in Africa, Europe, India, and Southeast Asia, as well as Trinity’s home city of Hartford.

Xiangming Chen has published extensively. He co-authored The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Blackwell Publishers, 2003; Chinese edition, 2005), authored As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and co-authored Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012; second edition, 2018; third edition, 2026). He edited and contributed heavily to Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity (University of Minnesota Press, 2009; Chinese edition, 2009), co-edited and contributed to Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai (Routledge, 2016; Chinese edition, 2016; Korean edition, 2017), and authored The Belt and Road Initiative as Epochal Regionalisation (Regional Studies Association and Routledge, 2020). His work has also appeared in many peer-reviewed journals and edited books.

Channeling and leveraging his scholarly research, Xiangming Chen has published short essays and commentaries on a variety of topics, including their republished versions, in printed or online special magazines and policy outlets such as Internationale Politik, The European Business Review, The European Financial Review, The World Financial Review, The Eurasian Review, The China Business Review, All China Review, ThinkChina, Asia Pathways, East Asia Forum, DOMES: International Review of Architecture, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, IIE Networker, Chicago Office, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Center on Global Cities website, among others.

Xiangming Chen believes in the value of teaching from and in strong connection to his research. Moreover, he encourages students to see that they can widen and deepen learning in the classroom from pursuing their own research that may connect to and benefit from his expertise, supervision, and collaboration. This philosophy and approach have led to 20 joint publications with more than a dozen Trinity students including an edited book on Hartford and other New England cities (see the Publication tab).  

Extended bio

• The Belt and Road Initiative as Epochal Regionalisation (with Julie Tian Miao and Xue Li). Routledge and the Regional Studies Association, 2020.
• Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience (with Anthony M. Orum and Krista Paulsen). 2nd Edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2018. (First edition, 2012; Third edition, 2026).
• Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai (co-edited with Sharon Zukin and Philip Kasinitz). Routledge, 2016. (Chinese edition, 2016; Korean edition, 2017).
• Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity . (edited). University of Minnesota Press, 2009. (Chinese edition, 2009).
• As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim .  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.

• "Zone, City, Border, Corridor: Recombined Territoriality, Infrastructural Coupling, and Geoeconomic Regionalisation Across the China-Laos Nexus and Beyond." Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (First published online November 27, 2025) doi:10.1111/sjtg.70044.
• “A (Long) Tale of Two Leaders: Charting the Spatial and Sectoral Roles of the West and China in Shaping Past, Present and Future Economic Globalization(s).” New Global Studies 17.3 (2022): 291-323. (First published online September 30, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2022-0002.
• “Reconnecting Eurasia: A New Logistics State, the China-Europe Freight Train, and the Resurging Ancient City of Xi’an.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 64.1 (2023): 60-88. 
• “Change and Continuity in Special Economic Zones: A Reassessment and Lessons from China.” Transnational Corporations 26.2 (2019): 49-74.
• “Globalisation Redux: Can China's Inside-Out Strategy Catalyse Economic Development and Integration Across Its Asian Borderlands and Beyond?” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 11.1 (2018): 35-58.
• “Demolition, Rehabilitation, and Conservation: Heritage in Shanghai’s Urban Regeneration, 1990-2015.” (with Xiaohua Zhong) Journal of Architecture and Urbanism 41.2 (2017): 82-91.
• “Modernity and Globalization: The Local and Global Sources of Individualistic and Materialistic Values in Shanghai.” (with Yuan Ren) Globalizations 13.1 (2016): 16-31.
• “Living in In-Between Spaces: A Structure-Agency Analysis of the India-China and India-Bangladesh Borderlands.” (with Pallavi Banerjee) Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning 34 (2013): 18-29.
• “A Tale of Two Regions in China: Rapid Economic Development and Slow Industrial Upgrading in the Pearl River and the Yangtze River Deltas.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 48.2-3 (2007): 167-201.

• "Market, Logistics, and Digital Infrastructure: How the World's Largest Small-Merchandise Center Has Sustained Its Trade Resilience." (with Shuyue Zhang '21 and Hunter Trylch '28), The European Business Review (November/December, 2025): 88-94. 
• “BYD’s Rapid Ascent to the Global EV Leader.” (with Jiayi Huang, Ph.D. ’16), The European Business Review (May/June, 2025): 86-92.
• “The Spatial Decoupling and Recombination of Capital and Labor: Understanding the New Dynamics and Flows Between China and Southeast Asia.” (with Na Fu, Sam Zhou ’19, and Gavin Xu ’21), pp. 120-150 in Asian Connections: Linking Mobilities of Labor and Capital, edited by Preet S. Aulakh and Philip Kelly. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• “Rethinking Border Cities: In-Between Spaces, Unequal Actors and Stretched Mobilities Across the China-Southeast Asia Borderland.” (with Curtis Stone ’10), pp. 479-501 in The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City, edited by Suzanne Hall and Ricky Burdett. Sage Publications, 2017.
• “China’s Emerging Silicon Valley: How and Why Shenzhen Has Become a Global Innovation Center.” (with Taylor Ogan ’18), The European Financial Review (December/January, 2016): 55-62.
• Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England's Forgotten Cities (co-edited with Nick Bacon ’10). Lexington Books, 2013 (paperback, 2015).
• “The ‘Instant City’ Coming of Age: The Production of Spaces i

• Visiting Professor, University of Bonn, Germany, June 1-July 8, 2023.
  
• Visiting Professor, University of Oslo, Norway, June 2022.
• Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, Yale University, Spring 2013.
• Adjunct Professor, Graduate School, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2016-2021.
• Guest Professor, School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, 2006-.
• Faculty Scholar, Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago, Fall 2005.
• Summer Visiting Professor, IES Beijing Center at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, 2004-2005.
• Visiting Scholar, Centre for Advanced Studies, National University of Singapore, June 1999.
• Joint Committee on Chinese Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council, 1993-1994.
• Global Research Fellow, IC² Institute, University of Texas at Austin, 1994-2019.
• Lead PI, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Better Policies for Alleviating Risks and Enhancing Opportunities,” Regional Studies Association, the United Kingdom, 2018-2020.
• Coordinator and lead faculty for a large Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) Implementation grant for Trinity College, Henry Luce Foundation, 2012-2018.
• The IIE Centennial Medal, Institute of International Education, 2019.
• Beacon Award, Institute of International Education (IIE)-Scholar Rescue Fund, 2016.
• Advisory Board, Review of Space and Society, Tongji University, Shanghai, 2022-.
• Editorial Board, Journal of Sociological Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, 2018-.
• International Advisory Board, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2009-2018.
• Editorial Board, City & Community, 2006-2009.
• Acting Editor, City & Community, January-May 2007.
• Advisory Board of Scholars, Research Project on “The 10 Traits of Globally Fluent Metros,” The Brookings Institution, 2012-2013.    
• Outstanding Service Award, Scholar Rescue Fund of the Institute of International Education, New York, 2009.
• Board of Trustees, Alfred Herrhausen Society, the International Forum of Deutsche Bank, 2006-2012.
• Advisory Board, the Urban Age Project, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2005-2012.
• Advisory Board, Global Value Change Project, BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, Munich, Germany, 2007-2008.
• A finalist for the Association of Borderland Studies Book Award, 2007.
  
• Council of the Urban and Community Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, 2002-2004.
• President, the North American Chinese Sociologists' Association (NACSA), 1998-2000.