About

Prof. Liang Wu’s teaching and research focus is on blue humanities, political economy, and critical mobility, globalization, maritime, science and technology, labor, environmental, and policy studies. Since 2006, through ethnographic fieldwork at ports, onboard, overseas, and online, he has been studying the lifeworlds and lifeways of seafarers – maritime workers delivering 90% of international trade who largely come from the Global South regions of Asia. His work specifically delves into the technoeconomic, infrastructural, legal, geographical, social, and environmental conditions and ramifications of container shipping in the postwar era.

Prof. Wu speaks more than six languages and as a first-generation and international graduate student in the U.S. and now a post-PhD engaged scholar for sustainable and socially-just future, he has been crossing boundaries and bridging academia, policy, and society. He is a former Science Communication and Marine Policy Specialist at the federal government, and is currently an interdisciplinary researcher examining the human dimensions and socio-environmental, international politics and dynamics of what is known as “the 4th Propulsion Revolution.”

Prof. Wu’s classes are dynamic, multimodal, student-oriented, and innovative. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the role of power, the historical and social contexts of various phenomena, as well as the diversity and complexity of humanity. His classes cover a variety of topics and themes, address current affairs and social issues, and enhance students’ analytical and critical thinking and writing, holistic and in-depth case study, and overall collaboration and communication skills.

Specifically, his maritime course “Peoples of the Sea: Sailors, Pirates, Fishers, and More” enhances students’ understanding of the relationship between humanity and the sea while tackling climate change, inequalities, and other important socio-environmental and political-economic matters. It engages with ethnographic studies of a variety of peoples of the sea to discuss how their modes of navigating, habituating, and laboring generate particular temporalities, spatialities, socialites, and cosmographies, including symbolic cultural forms, patterns of affect and effect, senses of location and delocation, and ways of knowing, living, working, and organizing that often defy hegemonic and land-centric views and practices.

Book and Documentary Recommendations

Awards

2024 Bates Faculty Development Fund
2024 Waterfront Alliance Waterfront Scholarship
2024 Wenner-Gren Post-PhD Research Grant
2022-23 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship
2021-22 Center for Engaged Scholarship Dissertation Fellowship
2021-22 Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies Dissertation Fellowship
2021 Waterfront Alliance Waterfront Scholarship
2021 Digital Initiatives Connect New York Fellowship
2019-20 Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship
2019-20 Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
2019-20 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant

Affiliations

Atlantic Black Box

Thriving Earth Exchange

Collaborative Accelerator for Lawful Maritime Conditions in Seafood (CALM-CS)

Marine Social Sciences Network

Waterfront Alliance

Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative