Carolyn Cartier is Professor of Human Geography and China Studies in International Studies at the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches 'Contemporary China' and has convened the Asia Pacific Research Group. A specialist in urban China and geographical thought, she is a Founding Member of the UTS China Research Centre (2009-14) and a Founding Fellow of the Centre for China in the World at the Australian National University. As a geographer with teaching specialties in nature-socieity relations, she also teaches 'Planetary Decarbonization' for the Sustainability and Environment program.

The core of Cartier's current research concentrates in fields of human geography, cities, and China Studies. Her research funded by the Australian Research Council focuses on how China changes subnational territory to establish and transform cities through changes to the administrative divisions, establishing the concept of territorial urbanization. She received the Association of American Geographer’s China Geography Specialty Group Outstanding Service Award 2022 in recognition of this work and for ‘significantly advancing China research in and beyond the discipline through highly impactful scholarship'.

The larger ambit of Cartier's research program concerns debates in the history of urban theory, contemporary socialism in China, and the conjunctures of spatial thought and political economy. She maintains research interests in comparative Asian studies including the urban landscape and built environment, the political economy of cities and regions, and representations of the city in contemporary alternative art.

Cartier has a trans-Pacific career path in the Australia and the US. She holds the AB, MA, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and continued study of Mandarin at National Taiwan University. She taught at Vassar College and the University of Oregon and was tenured in the Department of Geography at the University of Southern California. Among national service roles in the US, she served as member and co-chair of the U.S. Social Sciences Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship Final Decision-making Committee, supporting new and emerging research design for international doctoral research. She is a Fulbright Scholar, having held the fellowship in Hong Kong (2005-06), and maintains research interests in Hong Kong.

Committed to the priority of research design based on new ideas that advance the scholarship in combination with sustained local fieldwork, Cartier's general approach to research in Asia is theoretically-informed comparative international area studies. She supervises doctoral research on topics concerning cities, regions, territory, urban political economy, and comparative urbanization. Her advising approach supports students to pursue originality and critical significance.