Trained as an international relations scholar, Shen is an associate professor of the Department of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Institute of Education. He got his DPhil degree from University of Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations in 2006, and his MA/BA degrees in political science and history from Yale University in 2000. Before joining HKIEd in August 2009, he has worked as a visiting scholar in the Division of Social Science of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a research assistant professor in the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he established the International Relations Research Programme and Master of Global Political Economy Programme and served as their Director and Coordinator respectively. His current researches include Chinese nationalism and Chinese foreign policy, external relations of Hong Kong, anti-terrorism and regional security in Asia, among others.

Shen is an active researcher who has published dozens of academic research articles in leading internationally refereed journals. He is holding various adjunct professorships and honorary researcher positions in a number of universities and institutes all over the world, including Hong Kong Centre of Syracuse University, Asian-European Research Institute at Xi'an Jiaotong University. As a frequent speaker on global issues and a regular commentator on international relations on top of his academic identity, he is appointed to join public services by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government in various committees and the Central Policy Unit, and is also the Founding Chancellor of the Roundtable Network, a platform of young social scientists in Hong Kong.