Heidi Hui Shi (Shí Huì 石慧) obtained her Ph.D. specializing in Chinese linguistics from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon, USA.

She also holds an MA in linguistics from University of Oregon (Eugene, USA), another MA in international studies and East Asian Studies from Sogang University (Seoul, South Korea), and a BA in international economics and trade from Southeast University (Nanjing, China).

From March 2022 to July 2024, she served as a University Lecturer (yliopistonlehtori) of Chinese at UTU School of Language and Translation Studies. Since August 2024, she has been on a tenure track as an Assistant Professor (apulaisprofessori) of Chinese.

Before joining UTU, she was employed by University of Oregon, USA, where she taught East Asian language courses across proficiency levels (Chinese and Korean) and lectured linguistics content courses about East Asian linguistics and their pedagogies.

She has over 16 years of experience teaching Mandarin Chinese as a second or foreign language in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contexts, including China, South Korea, the US, and Finland.

As a linguist, Dr. Shi looks forward to contributing to the study of Chinese language and culture in the US, EU, and beyond. By doing so, her research focuses on facilitating Chinese language and culture instruction by accelerating the exchange of quality scholarship, expertise, and teaching materials.

Her study aims to bridge the gap between theoretical research and in-field Chinese teaching and learning. From a usage-based approach, she explores the interaction between Chinese language phenomena and cognition to provide an empirical basis for teaching and learning the language. She is also dedicated to the study of online neologisms and communications in the digital age, which is an angle to explore the interaction between language, mind and social experiences.

In summary, Dr. Shi’s research interests lie in Chinese as a second language pedagogy; cognitive linguistics (esp. metaphor and construction grammar); language and gender (e.g., gender socialization); digital media and language; corpus linguistics and quantitative methods. She adopts corpus-based and quantitative approaches to language research.

Her research language focus includes Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and English.

Dr. Shi has taught the following courses at UTU:

1. Chinese language courses: basic Chinese II; intermediate Chinese I & II; advanced Chinese I & II; MA classical Chinese (wenyanwen), MA business communication in Chinese

2. Linguistics content courses: Chinese grammar; language variation; interaction and communication in Chinese; language policies and reforms; advanced writing in Chinese

3. Research & thesis seminars: BA proseminar, MA seminar, MA research methodology

4. Strategic funding courses: project management in China and East Asia; Chinese workplace cultures

Dr. Shi is also PhD supervisor who welcomes prospective PhD reseachers.