New Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute

Having completed her four-year service to the Confucius Institute at the University of Southampton (CI) as Chinese Director, Dr Fang Zhou handed over her responsibilities to the new Chinese Director Dr Ruoling Zheng on 16th March 2020. Dr Zhou has worked closely with Dr Mark Cranshaw, the former British Director and Dr Ying Zheng, the current British Director on expanding the Chinese language teaching partnership with local schools and has laid a good foundation for the professional management of CI.

Dr Ruoling Zheng, the successor, arrived in the UK on 29 February 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic started in the UK. She did a self-quarantine for 14 days, during which communications and job transformation between the old and new Chinese Directors were taken online.

Before joining the CI, Dr Ruoling Zheng was a professor of education in China. She was a doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Education at Xiamen University and is the Deputy Director of Research Centre of Higher Education Development at Xiamen University. Her speciality is in China's higher education research and recently her research focuses on the University Entrance Examinations in modern China and Imperial Examinations in ancient China. She has been a visiting scholar in the University of Notre Dame, Columbia University and Wake Forest University in the United States.

We believe that with the good cooperation between the British Director and the Chinese Director, with the hardwork from CI teachers, all the tasks will be completed well, and new development is expected.