Chen Named Editor for The Professional Geographer
Guo Chen has been named the first Human Geography/Nature and Society editor for The Professional Geographer, inaugurating a new position at the journal. Chen will join current editor Heejun Chang, who will continue in his second term as editor, focusing on articles related to Geographic Methods/Physical Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences.
Chen is an associate professor of Geography and Global Urban Studies in the College of Social Science, a core faculty member of the Asian Pacific American (APA) Studies Program, and an affiliated faculty member of the Asian Studies Center and Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. A human geographer with broad interests in urban, economic, crititical, and environmental areas, she is also a teacher scholar and public intellectual who has authored and co-authored over 50 publications with a focus on inequality, urban poverty, housing rights for the poor, slums, migrants, urbanization and land use, urban governance, and social and environmental justice, including articles in The Professional Geographer and other leading geography journals. She is co-editor of Locating Right to the City in the Global South (Routledge 2013) and “Interrogating unequal rights to the Chinese city” (Environment and Planning A Special Issue based on her initiated sessions at the AAG meeting), as well as initiator and editor of a Focus Section for The Professional Geographer titled “Hidden Geographies: Migration, Intersectionality, and Social Justice in a Global Contemporaneous Space” (2023) featuring research articles on race, gender, ethnicity, class, nationality, citizenship, and social justice, by ten diverse scholars around the world. Her public scholarship includes many op-eds for key policy forums and her professional society, TV interview, and webinars. She has served on geography/urban studies flagship journals’ editorial boards (The Professional Geographer and Journal of Urban Affairs), serving as ad hoc reviewer for close to 50 journals, many programs and book publishers, and over a hundred organized professional sessions, invited talks, and conference presentations. Guo is a recipient of many prestigious awards in research, teaching, leadership, and service, including a Wilson Center Fellowship, university-wide teaching and women’s professional achievement awards, and an AAG specialty group outstanding service award.
Chen got a glimpse of the editorial role at Professional Geographer as a guest editor of a Focus section in 2023 and 2024/25 issues of the journal on the theme of Hidden Geographies. Her experiences have strengthened her vision for helping the journal to achieve valuable dialogue between the Global South and the Global North, and for attracting and publishing underrepresented authors in geography. “As I learned from editing our recent PG Focus section, the highest-impact articles increasingly need to speak to a diverse and international geography readership and the communities beyond,” says Chen. “My vision for the journal is to continue to bring in a diverse scholarship and to continue to stimulate communication, awareness, and exchange.”
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