Rate My Professor Wenjie Liao

Wenjie Liao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota (2015), an M.S. in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota (2012), and a Bachelor of Law (Honors) from China Foreign Affairs University (2007). During her doctoral studies, she received a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (2012), a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2013), and other awards including an International Dissertation Research Grant (2011). Prior to joining RIT, she taught sociology courses as an instructor and teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota, including Sociology of International Law, Sociology of Law, and Basic Social Statistics. She was granted tenure at RIT in 2023 and serves as a member of the Faculty Senate.

Liao's scholarly work focuses on law and society, encompassing immigration control and racialization, gender and leadership attitudes, feminist pedagogy, and authoritarian legal compliance. Her publications appear in leading journals, including two co-authored articles in American Behavioral Scientist (2022): "Migration and Racialization Part II: The Light and Shadow of Inclusion" with Kim Ebert and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, and "Migration and Racialization Part I: Constructing and Navigating a Hostile Terrain" with the same co-authors; "Gender, Education, and Attitudes toward Women’s Leadership in Three East Asian Countries: An Intersectional and Multilevel Approach" in Societies (2021, with Liying Luo); "How the ‘Neutral’ University Makes Critical Feminist Pedagogy Impossible: Intersectional Analysis from Marginalized Faculty on Three Campuses" in Sociological Spectrum (2021, with Erika Busse and Meghan Krausch); "Legitimacy of Authoritarian Law: Legal Compliance in China" in International Sociology (2019); "Catholic Church and International Law" in Annual Review of Law and Social Science (2017, with Elizabeth H. Boyle and Shannon Golden); and a book chapter "Law" in Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Gedächtnisforschung (2021, with Joachim J. Savelsberg). At RIT, she has led initiatives such as the Sociological Imagination Art Fair, where students use art to communicate social issues.