Rate My Professor Sheng-hsun Lee

Dr. Sheng-hsun Lee is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Queensland, serving as the Chinese Translating and Interpreting Major Convenor. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master's degree by coursework from Pennsylvania State University. As an applied linguist, he specializes in intercultural and public health communication, utilizing multimodal discourse analysis to investigate how language, gestures, eye gaze, and material objects co-construct meaning in social contexts. His earlier research examined language and cultural learning in multilingual settings, such as study abroad experiences and language classrooms. In recent years, his focus has shifted to public health crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, involving analysis of over 600 hours of press conference recordings and more than two million public online comments to identify effective strategies.

Lee has an extensive publication record in prestigious journals including Applied Linguistics, Language in Society, Discourse Studies, and Text & Talk. His 2025 Routledge monograph, Health Crisis Communication: Multimodal Classification for Pandemic Preparedness, received the 2025 High Distinction Award from the Taiwan Association of Medical History. Key journal articles include 'History in Person: A Longitudinal Study of a Language Learner’s Experience at Home and Abroad' (Applied Linguistics, 2020), 'Enregistering Mask-Wearing in the Time of a Public Health Crisis' (Language in Society, 2022), 'How Pandemic Detective Narratives Potentiate and Debilitate Trust' (Text & Talk, 2023), and 'Crisis Classifications in Mobility: Reporting the First COVID Death in Taiwan' (Discourse Studies, 2024). His achievements are honored by the 2021 Humanities Travelling Fellowship from the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the 2025 Young Scholar Research Award from the North America Taiwanese Professors' Association. Lee supervises PhD, MPhil, and Honours projects on health discourses, intercultural communication, and language learning and teaching, while pursuing projects to develop tailored communication guidelines for infectious diseases targeting high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women, and older adults with underlying conditions.