Shuang Wen

Shuang Wen (or 温爽 in Chinese) is a historian of modern China and the Arab world. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, Prof. Wen held fellowships at the National University of Singapore and New York University Abu Dhabi. As a native Mandarin speaker, she received intensive Arabic-language training from the American University in Cairo, University of Damascus, Georgetown University, and Middlebury College.

Prof. Wen specializes in the multilayered interactions and exchanges between China and the Middle East, which comprises agricultural, diplomatic, intellectual, labor, medicinal, and religious affairs. Her research has been funded by the American Historical Association, Association for Asian Studies, Qatar Foundation, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, German Ministry of Education and Research, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and has been featured by the American Historical Association in “Member Spotlight.” Her forthcoming monograph investigates the transformative processes of Arab-Chinese entanglements in the age of global empires from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II. Shuang serves as a book review editor for The Chinese Historical Review, an academic journal published by Routledge of Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the Chinese Historians in the United States Association.

Prof. Wen is an innovative educator. Her experiential learning module on Middle Eastern food history has been reported by the NYU Shanghai Gazette. She is also a recipient of New York University Teaching Advancement Grant (AY 25-27) for her pedagogical innovation of “Bringing Middle Eastern History to Life in Shanghai: Enhancing Student Engagement and Learning Experience with VR Simulation Technology” and a finalist of NYU Shanghai Teaching Excellence Award (AY23-24).

Before switching her career to academia, Shuang was a broadcast journalist for Phoenix Satellite Television InfoNews Channel in Hong Kong (香港鳳凰衛視資訊台, 2003-2006), covering major breaking news events from the Middle East, and English-Mandarin-Cantonese simultaneous interpreter for live news coverage.

Select Publications

• “Between Worlds: Identity, Survival, and Epistemic Making in Modernities of the Global South (1860–1933),” The Chinese Historical Review 32, no. 2 (November 2025): 173-197. https://doi.org/10.1080/1547402X.2025.2600839
• "Overcoming Fractures of Cross-Cultural Understanding: Modern Chinese Knowledge Production on the Arab World,” Global Perspectives (May 2024), Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2024.117326.
• “A Short History of Modern Arab Knowledge Production on China,” in Islam, Revival, and Reform: Redefining Tradition for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Natana J. DeLong-Bas, University of Syracuse Press, 2022, chapter 9.
• “From Manchuria to Egypt: Soybean’s Global Migration and Transformation in the Twentieth Century,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 13 (June 2019): 176-194.
• “The Characters of Egypt Reflected by Chinese Arabist Xue Qingguo” (“as-Shakhṣiyyah al-Miṣriyyah fi mir’āh mustaʿarab Ṣini biqalami Bassam Xue Qingguo” الشخصية المصرية في مرآة مستعرب صيني بقلم بسام شوي تشينغ قوه), in special issue on China-Egypt relations, Egyptian Gazette, May 14, 2015, Cairo, Egypt

Education

• PhD, Transregional History (modern Middle East and East Asia)
  Georgetown University, USA
• MA, Middle East Studies and Arabic
  American University in Cairo, Egypt
• MA, English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation and Translation
  Beijing Foreign Studies University, China
• BA, English Language, Literature, and Culture
  University of International Relations, China