Dr Weihong Zhang

Biography

Weihong has been an undergraduate and postgraduate student in four universities in two countries (China and Australia) and has seven degrees and diplomas in total: BA, MA, Postgraduate Diploma and PhD, all in English from three Chinese Universities and then DipEd Secondary, Dip Ed Computers in Education and MEd in Information Communication Technology in Education, all via distance education from Monash University.Weihong has worked as research fellow/assistant/associate in education and creative industries, as a practising interpreter and translator, as a full-time lecturer in English, part-time lecturer in English, tutor of Education/English/international trade subjects at more than a dozen universities in Australia and China. She also taught English and Information Technology in Australian state and Catholic schools.Weihong was awarded her PhD in 1995. On graduation, she was one of two people in the People s Republic of China with a PhD in Australian Studies and one of about a dozen to have written a PhD thesis in English.
Her PhD is from Beijing Foreign Studies University, one of China's foremost universities, where her supervisor was Professor Hu Wenzhong, China's leading authority in foreign language education and an expert in cross-cultural communication. He was Vice-Chancellor of Beijing Foreign Studies University for 11 years, and for many years a household name throughout China as presenter of "Follow Me", a popular BBC-produced television series on learning English. Dr Michael Sharkey, of the University of New England, was co-supervisor of her PhD thesis.
This thesis, on Thomas Keneally's Work as a Continuum, is cited several times by Peter Pierce, formerly of Monash University, now a professor of Australian Literature and a most recent head of school at James Cook University, Townsville, in his book, Australian Melodramas: Thomas Keneally's Fiction (UQP, 1995), in which he describes it as `a significant benefit for my work'.
The thesis was also cited in three public lectures in October 1995 by the distinguished Indonesian journalist, writer and poet, Goenawan Mohamad (founding editor of the news magazine, Tempo, in publication again after being banned by the Soeharto government for several years). In the Flinders 1995 Asia Lecture, Mr Goenawan said Weihong's work on Keneally had helped him 'to get a glimpse of an Asian perspective of an Australian mind'.QUT sponsored Weihong's research trip to Australia to enable her to work on the thesis in Brisbane and Sydney back in 1992-1993.