Chen, one of five recipients for 2023, is currently working on his dissertation project, titled “The Ocean’s Child: Infrastructural Semicolonialism and the Making of the Modern Yangtze River.” It explores the cultural shift of the Yangtze River from a natural barrier defending against potential threats from the sea to a thoroughfare connecting China to global industrial capitalism, while also delving in the lives of those, both Chinese and foreign, who maintained the river’s infrastructure.