Dr. Mimi Sheller is the Dean of The Global School. Prior to joining WPI, she was tenured Professor of Sociology, Head of the Sociology Department, and founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Dr. Sheller was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa from Roskilde University, Denmark, in 2015, and has held Visiting Fellowships at the University of Miami (2019); the Annenberg School of Communication at University of Pennsylvania (2016); the Penn Humanities Forum (2010); the Center for Mobility and Urban Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark (2009); Media@McGill, Canada (2009); the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University (2008); and Swarthmore College (2006-2009).
Dr. Sheller is an internationally recognized scholar and higher education leader, with fifteen years of executive leadership across academic units, research centers, and professional organizations. She is founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities and past President of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. She helped to establish the “new mobilities paradigm” and is considered to be a key theorist in the interdisciplinary field of mobilities research and in Caribbean studies. Her work has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Macarthur Foundation, the Mobile Lives Forum, and the Graham Foundation in Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Dr. Sheller serves on the international Advisory Boards for the Society for Caribbean Research, the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at University of Pennsylvania, the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds, the Asia Mobilities Research Network and the Academy for Mobility Humanities at Konkuk University, South Korea, and the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation. She is also an Honorary Member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Mobility and the Humanities at University of Padua, Italy. Dr. Sheller has also offered expert consultation for the World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction, the National Science Foundation’s Haiti Earthquake Research Review, the Social Science Research Council’s Climate Change Group, and companies such as Michelin.
Dr. Sheller has published more than 125 articles and book chapters, and is the author or co-editor of fifteen books, including Advanced Introduction to Mobilities (Edward Elgar, 2021); Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke University Press, 2020); Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Verso, 2018); Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity (MIT Press, 2014); Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press, 2012); Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (Routledge, 2003); and Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Macmillan Caribbean, 2000).
