Shen is Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Chinese people began to emigrate in considerable numbers to various parts of the world in early modern times. Shen examines the impact of this diaspora in three patterns of “life meangfulness” in philosophic works by Chinese scholars residing in
the West: Tang Junyi, Antonio Cua and Chung-Ying Cheng, and himself.