About Us
Conference Organizing Committee
Directors Prof. ZENG Yanyu, Dean of the
College of Foreign Studies.
Mark Turner, Director of the
Center for Cognitive Science.
Committee members: Prof. JIANG Lihua, Prof. DENG Yunhua, Prof. WAN Guangrong, Dr. YANG Yuxiao, Dr. TAN Xiaojuan, Dr. ZHANG Ying.
Hunan Normal University
Situated in Changsha, a city renowned for its historical and cultural significance, Hunan Normal University (HUNNU) is an institution of higher education designated as a national “211 Project” and “Double Top-Class Project” university. Jointly supported by the Ministry of Education and Hunan Province, HUNNU was founded in 1938 as a National Normal College (NNC), establishing it as one of the oldest normal universities in China. During the wave of university reforms in 1953, Hunan Normal College (HNC) was built upon that NNC foundation, and subsequently renamed HUNNU in 1984. In 1996, it was honored with inclusion in the “211 Project,” a prestigious initiative of the Chinese Ministry of Education to develop “100 key universities to be promoted in the 21st century.” Since 2000, HUNNU has undergone a period of significant expansion, merging with Hunan Teachers’ College, Hunan College of Politics and Law, and Hunan Medical College.
HUNNU comprises 24 colleges and offers 92 undergraduate disciplines across 11 principal categories: philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, technology, agriculture, medicine, management, and art. The university boasts six National Key Disciplines, including Ethics, English Language and Literature, Modern Chinese History, Developmental Biology, Theoretical Physics, and Basic Mathematics. Furthermore, it possesses nine Key Disciplines sponsored by the 211 Project and 22 provincial-level key disciplines designated under the 12th Five-Year Plan.
HUNNU has established partnerships with 171 universities and institutions across 41 countries and regions to foster personnel exchange and cooperation in teaching and scientific research. It has also co-established Confucius Institutes at Kazan Federal University in Russia, Wonkwang University in South Korea, and Southern Utah University in the United States.
Over its 80-year history, HUNNU has demonstrated consistent growth, even amidst the turmoil of World War II. Its faculty, across generations, have steadfastly adhered to the motto "Be humane, benevolent, excellent and diligent," working tirelessly to achieve the prosperity evident today. In recent years, driven by the “211 Project” and the “Double Top-Class Project,” HUNNU has made significant strides in discipline development, student education, faculty development, teaching research, and social service, exceeding the needs of Hunan Province in its educational, economic, and social development.
Looking forward, HUNNU embraces holistic education as its core mission, striving to become a leading comprehensive university. With distinct advantages in teacher training, it aims to achieve top-tier status in China and gain international recognition.
College of Foreign Studies, 410081 36 Lushan Rd., Yuelu District, Changsha, China
The College of Foreign Studies at Hunan Normal University traces its origins to the Department of Foreign Studies at National Normal College, founded in 1938. Its inaugural dean was Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998), a renowned scholar of Western and Chinese culture. Following Qian Zhongshu, the College benefited from the leadership of other eminent scholars, including Luo Kailan (1906-1988) and Liu Zhongde (1914-2008). Today, the College offers a first-level doctoral program in Foreign Language and Literature and hosts a research station for post-doctoral fellows. Under the leadership of Professor Jiang Hongxin, its English Language and Literature discipline has been recognized as a national key discipline. In September 2017, its Foreign Languages and Literatures discipline was admitted into the national “World First-Class Discipline Construction Project,” one of only six disciplines of its kind in China to receive this distinction.
The College comprises the Departments of English, Translation Studies, Russian, Japanese, Korean, French, and Public English. It also boasts a number of prominent research institutes, including the Hunan Center for International Cultural Communication, the Hunan Center for Sino-Russian Cultural Exchanges, the Center of American Studies, the Center of Northeast Asian Studies, the Center for Studies of British and Irish Literature, the Center of Modern Foreign Language Teaching, the Center of Cognitive Linguistic Studies, and the Center for Studies of British and American Poetry. The College publishes the Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, along with a corresponding Chinese journal, and supports three Confucius Institutes abroad.
The College faculty consists of 26 full professors, 44 associate professors, and numerous lecturers, of whom 51 hold doctoral degrees. The faculty includes two members of the Discipline Assessment Group under the State Council, two state-level teaching masters, and two recipients of the New Century Talent Program of the Chinese Ministry of Education. The College maintains partnerships with over 30 universities in the United States, Britain, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. Currently, it enrolls over 40 doctoral candidates, over 600 graduate students, and over 1,200 full-time undergraduates.
Adhering to the motto “international perspective, global sense, honesty, integrity, and versatility,” the College of Foreign Studies is dedicated to cultivating well-rounded and innovative talents who are both physically and mentally healthy, ethically grounded and intellectually developed, and equipped to adapt to societal changes.
Red Hen Lab™
The International Distributed Little Red Hen Lab™ is a global big data science laboratory and cooperative dedicated to research in multimodal communication. Red Hen leverages the expertise of researchers from diverse fields, ranging from artificial intelligence and statistics to linguistics and political communication, to create comprehensive datasets of parsed and intelligible multimodal communication. It also develops tools to process these data and any other data amenable to such analysis. Red Hen’s organizational structure and computational tools are designed to foster reliable and cumulative progress in the dynamic and challenging field of human multimodal communication. Understanding how humans create meaning and interpret forms necessitates this type of collaborative approach.
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