C.K. Lee’s research focuses on the politics of rights and the changing citizenship regime in China, examining how ordinary Chinese mobilize legal and extra-legal resources to battle for their rights as citizens, forging new notions of property, labor and land, and engaging the local and central governments. She is most recently the author of Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (UC Press, 2007), which received the Sociology of Labor Book Award in 2008.

Prof. Amar has spent years studying the geopolitics, sexual politics, and global policing apparatuses of Cairo and other global cities. As demonstrated in his important recent articles, “Empowering Egypt’s New Pluralism,” “Mubarak’s Phantom Presidency,” and “Why Egypt’s Progressives Win” which appeared first in Jadaliyya Ezine and subsequently on Aljazeera.net, his knowledge of the history and internal divisions of Egypt’s power structure, particularly the military and police, is intricate, as is his understanding of the counter-forces of dissent now exploding throughout the Middle East.