Research Achievement Award Winner – Dr. Lanyan Chen
Dr. Lanyan Chen, associate professor in the School of Human and Social Development - Social Welfare and Social Development recently earned a Research Achievement Award from Nipissing University. Here is a short profile on Dr. Chen and her work.
Dr. Chen brings a feminist’s perspective to her research. Her authored books, journal articles, contributed chapters, and other publications deal with gender issues and inequality. She has mostly focused on China but is increasingly doing research on these issues in Canada and other countries using comparative perspectives.
She recently contributed a chapter, to the Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements: Knowledge, Power and Social Change. The Handbook is a collection of articles by about 30 of the world’s best-known feminists.
Dr. Chen’s chapter discusses the women’s movement in China, a topic she is very familiar with. She has chronicled the social issues Chinese women have faced in urban and rural areas including their struggle with the one-child policy and the impacts caused by the lack of women’s participation in politics.
“It's an attempt to review the various movements and learn from their collective experiences,” said Dr. Chen. “At the same time, we are trying to use these experiences to project future directions.”
As well, Dr. Chen’s research titled Rural China's Invisible Women: A feminist political economy approach to food security was published recently by the Journal of Socialist Studies.
In July 2014, Dr. Chen was chosen to join a team of four experts evaluating the current Country Programme of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in China. In November she was invited to take over leadership of the team to complete the Country Evaluation Report. This Report assessed the current Country Programme (2010-2015) based on UNFPA's evaluation standards and procedures, consultations with the Chinese government and fieldwork, and assessed the project directions and provided suggestions for the next Country Programme in China which begins in 2016. This review comes at a critical time as China is undergoing transformation in policy development to cope with the changes in population dynamics including increased urbanization, increased proportion of people over 60 and a continuing imbalanced sex ratio. The Evaluation Report will serve as a guide for UNFPA and the Chinese government to address the population challenges China is facing. It will soon be available at www.unfpa.cn.
While on sabbatical leave, from July 2014 to June 2015, Dr. Chen has been visiting universities in Europe, including Lund University in Sweden and Potsdam University in Germany. At Lund, she gave a talk on Gender Statistics and Local Governance in China at the annual series of lectures organized by the Department of Sociology. On October 23, she gave a presentation at Development Research Day: China and the Developing World conference organized by the School of Economics and Management on Imbalanced sex ratio in China, a byproduct of 'hegemonic masculinity' or population, and other policies: implications for China's south/south cooperation with African countries. At Potsdam University on November 18, she gave a lecture onDealing with an Imbalanced Sex Ratio in China for the university's WIPCAD Lecture Series organized by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.
Dr. Chen has been engaging researchers at these universities on discussions about the recent developments in the three significant social welfare models in the world: Swedish, German and Canadian, representing the English speaking OECD countries. Her recent learning will not only inform her teaching in social welfare and social development but also her research on a collaborative book on social welfare in Canada which she is working collaborating on with her colleagues at Nipissing.