Biography

Danwei Li is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Chinese at the University of Rhode Island (URI). She has experience in developing and teaching Chinese language and content-based courses, both independently and collaboratively, from introductory to advanced levels. Before rejoining URI in Fall 2024, she served as a Visiting Lecturer at Brown University from 2016 to 2018 and as a Lecturer in the Chinese Flagship Program at URI from 2018 to 2020. Additionally, she worked as a language instructor in the Middlebury Language Schools’ Chinese immersion program for six summers. Her broad research interests include second language acquisition, bilingualism, psycholinguistics, intercultural communicative competence, and language pedagogy. She regularly presents her work at national conferences and won the NFMLTA-NCOLCTL Research Award in 2024. Dedicated to connecting theory with practice, she aims to be an inspiring educator who brings the latest research and acquisition theories into her teaching. Her career goal as a language teaching professor and scholar can be defined by three words–“Inspiration, Creativity and Sharing”, which were first used by Agnès Varda in defining herself as a film director. She strives to enhance students’ individual performance to achieve proficiency goals while fostering a genuine interest in the Chinese language and culture and cultivating their critical cultural awareness.