Xu Cen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication with the Huggins Fellowship at the University of Missouri. She is double minoring in Women’s and Gender Studies and College Teaching. Her research focuses on mediated communication and intergroup relations. She uses experiments to test how media exposure can shorten the distance between majority groups and minority groups. She brought intersectionality into media effects studies and is trying to extend it to transnational spaces. She also examines the media representations of minorities and how to improve their sense of belonging through media portrayal.  

She served as the Undergraduate Associates Coordinator for the Media & Diversity Center at the University of Missouri for two years. She has mentored undergraduate associates for content analysis and VR experimental studies, and organized activities to promote media literacy. She is currently the Graduate Advisor for the Arts, Social Science, or Humanities (ASH) undergraduate research team. She is also a Deaton Scholar who aims at empowering women. 

She was the Assistant Course Director for the COMM 2100: Media and Society class, and has taught this class for three years. She is currently the instructor for COMM 4638: New Technologies and Communication, and the teaching assistant for COMM 2500: Introduction to Communication.