Global News

Kathleen Cagney, Professor in the Department of Sociology, has been appointed as faculty director of the Yuen Campus in Hong Kong and chair of the Hong Kong Faculty Advisory Board effective July 1, 2020. Kate recently completed her term as Deputy Dean in the Division of Social Sciences, and is director of the Population Research Center and co-director of the Center on Aging. Kate has been involved with the Yuen Campus since visiting as a Yuen Visiting Scholar in September 2019 and is leading an ongoing series of webinars titled “100 Year Lives in Asia” that brings together UChicago faculty, Hong Kong colleagues, and experts across the globe to discuss issues of deep concern to the life cycle in east Asia. As faculty director, Kate will direct the Center’s programmatic agenda and supervise the distribution of the Provost’s Global Faculty Awards funding for research projects and events in Hong Kong and the surrounding region.

Kate succeeds Provost Ka Yee Lee, David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, the James Franck Institute, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, and the College, who served as faculty director of the Yuen Campus in Hong Kong since July 2014. During her tenure, Ka Yee established and grew the University’s presence in Hong Kong, building meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with peer institutions and paving the way for the broad range of academic engagement now in place, spanning biochemistry, linguistics, marine biology, the visual arts, entrepreneurship and innovation, and well beyond. She also led the university’s efforts around the negotiation, planning, and opening of the Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex | The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong in November 2018.