Chris Chan is the Associate Director of Graduate Studies (ADGS) for Penn English. As ADGS, he provides administrative and curricular support for Penn English's M.A. and Ph.D. programs, and he assists the Graduate Chair with the Department's graduate admissions process each year.

Chris received his B.A. (hons., summa cum laude) in English and Chemistry from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Penn. His dissertation, Communal Lyricisms and the Lyricization of English Poetry, 1650–1790, received the Department's Diane Hunter Dissertation Prize (2020). Two chapters of the dissertation were subsequently reworked and published as articles for Eighteenth-Century Studies and Eighteenth-Century Life. 

After earning his Ph.D., Chris completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Ghent University in Belgium (2021-24), where he taught B.A. and M.A. courses in English Literature for the Department of Literary Studies. At UGent, he also served as Grant Writer and Project Manager for HACIDA: Humor and Conflict in the Digital Age, which was directed by Andrew Bricker and Alberto Godioli. In this role, Chris successfully co-authored the proposal for the EU-funded research project DELIAH: Democratic Literacy and Humour (2025-29).

Alongside his role as ADGS, Chris continues to teach occasional undergraduate courses for Penn English, and to offer consultations for undergraduates who are contemplating attending graduate school. Please feel free to get in touch with him for more information.