He is currently the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College.
Chen holds the positions of distinguished guest professor in the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, adjunct professor at the graduate school of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and honorary research fellow at the Institute of Economics of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the IC² Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
Chen co-authored The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective with Anthony Orum.
Chen is the author of As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim, which was a finalist for the Association of Borderland Studies Book Award in 2007.
Chen helped create, and is currently a senior contributor for the “China & the World” series at The European Financial Review.