On November 11, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) inaugurated its annual “Academic Month” and Research Achievement Exhibition at the newly established Global Governance & Area Studies Building on the Songjiang Campus, kicking off the celebrations for SISU’s 75th anniversary.

   The event was presided over by Zha Mingjian, SISU’s Vice President and attended by President Li Yansong, Vice President Yi yonggang as well as the heads of offices, departments and secondary units. Feng Zhiwei, a researcher of the Institute of Applied Linguistics at Ministry of Education was also invited to the ceremony.

   In his opening speech, President Li reaffirmed that SISU always upholds its school motto of “Integrity, Vision and Academic Excellence” and has cultivated a large number of foreign language professionals. As part of SISU’s 75th anniversary, he explained, the “Academic Month” lecture series is designed to foster a diversity of perspectives and spark intellectual exchanges. Li encouraged the faculty and students to deepen academic engagement, expand horizons and vigorously carry forward the “SISU Academic Spirit” of perseverance and resilience, openness and tolerance, and innovation and ambition. With a focus on innovation as the major driving force, he expressed confidence in SISU’s continued advancement in research and its commitment to contributing wisdom and strength to society and the country.

   University leaders then unveiled the Research Achievement Exhibition for the 75th anniversary. The exhibition, featuring 75 representative faculty publications in the past five years, showcased SISU’s fruitful achievements in fields such as language and literature, economics and management, international affairs, and artificial intelligence. School leaders, heads of each department and secondary unit toured the exhibition together with representatives of the authors.

   Following the opening, a lecture on “Digital Humanities in Linguistics Studies” was held in the Lecture Hall of the Global Governance & Area Studies Building. Feng Zhiwei, a member of the Chinese Information Processing Society of China and a researcher of the Institute of Applied Linguistics of Ministry of Education, shared his insights into the development stages and four research levels of digital humanities. He interpreted the significance and value of digital humanities with vivid examples. As a new disciplinary paradigm, digital humanities shows the transformative potential in enhancing research efficiency, enriching data resources, and broadening research fields. The lecture was hosted by Hu Kaibao, Assistant President of SISU.

   “Mr. Feng’s lecture impressed me deeply with the revolutionary impact of digital technology in the humanities. Converting images into dynamic graphs, translating cuneiform... These techniques not only make historical artifacts and famous paintings ‘come alive’, but also greatly promote the depth and breadth of linguistic research. This lecture immersed me into the interesting parts of digital technology and aroused my expectations towards future academic exploration.” noted Qiao Xiangqi, a graduate student from the School of Economics and Finance.

   He Tingjie, a graduate student of the School of Education, remarked that as a learner of “English plus Education”, she recognized the promising prospect of the application of digital humanities, which inspired her to further explore the new approaches looking into the depth of teaching and research in foreign language. With SISU’s strength in the digital preservation and dissemination of language and cultural resources, she can expand her knowledge of culture and history, and pursue new teaching modes of foreign language in the future through empirical evaluation of different teaching methods by quantitative analysis.