Vera Fennell

Associate Professor
610-758-3342
Maginnes Hall 310
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2001

Vera Fennell is Associate Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. She joined the department in 2008. She earned a doctorate and master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Princeton University. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She has previously taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Professor Fennell has published several book chapters and her research has appeared in the Review of Black Political EconomyModern Communications; the International Journal of Communications; and the Indonesian Journal of International Studies. In addition, Professor Fennell has been a research associate at the Hubert Humphrey Institute for Research on Race, Gender, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota; a research intern at Human Rights Watch and the Ford Foundation Office in Beijing, China; a legislative intern for the Office of the Mayor of New York City; and a congressional legislative intern for Congressman Charles B. Rangel.

Her book, Reading Black Through Red: Blackness as China’s Cold War Era Soft Power, will be published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.