Yu Xie the Director of the  Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China, Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Sociology and has a faculty appointment at the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. He is also a Visiting Chair Professor of the Center for Social Research, Peking University. His main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies, and sociology of science. His recently published works include: Marriage and Cohabitation (University of Chicago Press 2007) with Arland Thornton and William Axinn, Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis with Daniel Powers (Emerald 2008, second edition), and Is American Science in Decline? (Harvard University Press, 2012) with Alexandra Killewald.

Xie joined the faculty Aug. 1 after 26 years at the University of Michigan, most recently as the Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, Statistics and Public Policy and a research professor in the Population Studies Center at Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Xie's main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies and sociology of science. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica and the National Academy of Sciences.

His appointment is part of a University initiative to deepen the regional studies curriculum in the social sciences. The Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China is part of PIIRS, and Xie's appointment marks the first joint faculty appointment by PIIRS and a department in the social sciences.

"Yu Xie's appointment is a transformative event for PIIRS and for the study of contemporary China at Princeton," said Mark Beissinger, the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics and director of PIIRS. "It brings a world-class demographer and sociologist to the University and establishes the new Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China as a focal point for the development of China-related research and instruction in the social sciences."