The School of Foreign Languages of Shenzhen University was founded in 2006. Its predecessor was the Department of Foreign Languages, established with the support of Peking University in 1983. Professor Li FuNing, a renowned scholar of foreign literature and culture, served as the first Department chair. The School offers five BA programs: English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. Additionally, it offers two “Minor Programs” for undergraduates, namely Advanced English-to-Chinese Interpreting and International News and Foreign Affairs, and four “Featured Classes,” which are English Drama, Japanese-English, English-German, and English-Spanish. The School has a prioritized key first-tier discipline of Foreign Languages and Literature in Guangdong Province, which consists of four secondary-tier disciplines, namely English Language and Literature, Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Japanese Language and Literature, and Spanish Language and Literature. It runs a TESOC program tailor-made for international graduate students and a joint master’s program in English Pedagogy with the Normal College of Shenzhen University. The School has four research centers, including the Language Testing and Evaluation Center, the Netherlands Studies Center, the East Asian Studies Center, and the Poetry and Drama Center. It has two provincial-level teaching teams, one provincial-level academic innovation team, one provincial-level experimental teaching demonstration center, one provincial-level first-class English major construction site, and two provincial-level first-class undergraduate courses.
The School has high quality faculty with a broad vision, enduring strength, and an international perspective. Among the 161 full-time faculty members are: 16 professors, including seven internationally-acclaimed distinguished professors (Tan Zaixi, Gu Mingdong, Ning Yizhong, Peng Xuanwei, Cai Xinle, Jeroen van de Weijer, and Péter Hajdu), 40 associate professors, 20 assistant professors, 65 Chinese lecturers and 15 foreign lecturers. Visiting scholars to the School include one foreign professor (Academician of the European Academy of Sciences) and six professors of the Humanities Lecture Program (three Changjiang Scholars, two members of the Discipline Evaluation Committee of the State Council, and one member of the Foreign Language Teaching Committee of the Ministry of Education). Among the full-time teaching staff, there is one national second-class Professor, one who is receiving the special allowance of the State Council, one Outstanding Talent of the Ministry of Education in the New Century, one Oriental Scholar in Shanghai, one scholar of the “Thousand-Hundred-Ten” project in Guangdong Province, two Local Leading Talents in Shenzhen, nine C-class Talents of the Shenzhen “Peacock Program”, and three Outstanding Scholars in Shenzhen University.
The School is carrying out research projects at national, provincial, and municipal levels, with a total funding of RMB 4.792 million. Additionally, from 2019 to 2021, the School has received RMB 12 million in funding from the Shenzhen Municipal Government for high-level university construction. From 2015 to 2019, the School has undertaken 11 national projects and 21 provincial projects. The School’s research team has published 28 monographs, 36 edited volumes, translated books or textbooks, and 316 research papers, including 46 SSCI/A&HCI papers and 93 CSSCI papers. The School has independently founded the journal Language, Context and Text: The Social Semiotics Forum (published by John Benjamins) and has set up the editorial office for the A&HCI journal neohelicon.
The School is highly committed to cultivating students with a solid foundation, a broad vision and rich diversity. It gives full play to the advantages and strengths of well-established programs and disciplines, contributes to the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the transformation of Shenzhen into a pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The School has built a comprehensive talent training system characterized by first-class teaching and research facilities, quality learning environment and high-degree internationalization. It has signed MOUs with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, the University of Western Australia, University of Jena, Autonomous University of Madrid, and Osaka University to facilitate quality international exchanges. It provides opportunities for BA, MA and PhD students to join internship programs with the China Xinhua News Network Corporation (CNC), Tencent Games, the Shenzhen Foreign Affairs Office, and Shenzhen Daily.
Upholding the University motto of “self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-improvement” and the School motto of “fluent in Chinese and foreign languages and learning from the East and the West”, the School of Foreign Languages is becoming the most important foreign language talent training base, a foreign language discipline highland and an international benchmark in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.
