The College of International Studies was founded in 2006. Its predecessor was the Department of Foreign Languages, established with the assistance of Peking University in 1983. Professor Li Funing, a renowned scholar of foreign literature, served as the first Department chair. The School offers five undergraduate programs: English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. Additionally, it offers two “micro majors” for undergraduates, namely Advanced English-Chinese Interpretingand 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 Foreign Languages and Literature discipline in Guangdong Provinceanda TESOC program tailor-made for international graduate students. It runs a joint master’s program in English Pedagogy with the Normal College of Shenzhen University. The School has four research centers: the Language Testing and Evaluation Center, the Netherlands Studies Center, the East Asian Studies Center, and Poetry and Drama Center.
The College has a high-quality teaching team, a broad vision, enduring strength, and an international dimension. The School owns 161full-time faculty members:16 professors, including seven 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. The college carries out research projects at national, ministerial, provincial, and municipal levels, with total funding of RMB 4.792 million. From 2019 to 2021, the School secured over RMB 12 million in special funding from the Shenzhen Municipal Government for high-level university construction. From 2015 to 2019, the School has undertaken 11 national and 21 ministerial and provincial projects. The School's research team has published 28 monographs, 36 edited or translated books and 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 Semiotics Forum(published by John Benjamins), and has set up the editorial office for the A&HCI journal neohelicon.
The College is highly committed to cultivating students with a solid foundation, broad range and rich diversity. It gives full play to the advantages and strengths of well-established programs and disciplines, contributing to the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and transforming 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, a 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, the University of Jena, the Autonomous University of Madrid, and Osaka University to facilitate quality international exchanges. It also provides undergraduate, master and doctoral students opportunities to join internship programs with China Xinhua News Network Corporation (CNC), Tencent Games, Shenzhen Foreign Affairs Office, and Shenzhen Daily.
