Wenhao Diao founded and co-directs the Center for East Asian Studies, a Title VI National Resource Center supported by the US Department of Education, at the University of Arizona. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and an affiliated faculty member in the interdisciplinary graduate program of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. She received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and her B.A. and M.A. from East China Normal University. As an applied linguist, she is interested in the identities, ideologies, and (in)equities that Chinese language learning and teaching (re)produce and (re)distribute. Her research has primarily focused on the phenomenon of study abroad -- particularly going to and from China More recently she has examined Chinese learning during the secondary to postsecondary transition. She has co-edited a book entitled Language Learning in Study Abroad: The Multilingual Turn (Multilingual Matters, 2021) and a guest edited special issue themed Study Abroad in the 21st Century for the L2 Journal in 2016. Prior to joining the University of Arizona, she taught at Middlebury College, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Virginia, and East China Normal University.
Wenhao Diao is the Interim Department Head of East Asian Studies.