Dr. Wenhong Chen is a professor of media studies and sociology and a Distinguished Scholar in the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Chen earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Toronto in Canada and was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University.

Dr. Chen has more than 100 publications, including articles in top-ranked journals in the fields of communication and media studies, sociology, and management. Dr. Chen’s research has received awards from the Academy of Management, International Association of Chinese Management Research, American Sociological Association, International Communication Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and National Communication Association. Her research has focused on digital media technologies in entrepreneurial and organizational settings, supported by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the Ford Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Foundation of Science and Technology of Portugal, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the East-West Center, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Advanced Micro Devices, Bell Canada, and the City of Austin among others. Dr. Chen’s current project examines how U.S. and Chinese AI policies affect tech and media entrepreneurship and beyond.

Dr. Chen has been an award-winning educator. She is a Provost’s Teaching Fellow (2021-2024) and received the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award at UT Austin in 2023 and the Barry Sherman Teaching Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in 2022.

Dr. Chen is the vice chair (2023-2025) of the Global Communication & Social Change Division, International Communication Association. She served as the founding co-director of Center for Entertainment and Media Industries at UT Austin from 2018 to 2023 and the chair of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of American Sociological Association in 2017.