Hunan Normal University

Hunan Normal University began in 1938 as the National Normal College in Anhua, merged into Hunan University in 1949, was re-established as Hunan Normal College in 1952 and took its present name in 1984; it joined the national “211 Project” in 1996 and the “Double First-Class” initiative in 2017.

Teaching takes place in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, across seven campuses, the main one lying with its back to Yuelu Mountain and facing the Xiang River on a site of more than 4,000 mu. The university is organised in 24 colleges, among them a College of Fine Arts, and offers 78 undergraduate programmes across twelve discipline categories, the arts included.

Degrees run through 21 first-level doctoral programmes and 34 first-level master’s programmes, with 20 postdoctoral stations. Some 3,600 staff serve nearly 50,000 students, more than 14,000 of them postgraduates and close to 1,000 from abroad, and the faculty includes two academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Foreign languages and literature, one of six national key disciplines, is the field selected for the national world-class discipline list, and agreements with 211 universities and institutions in 56 countries frame exchange, among them Confucius Institutes co-founded with Kazan Federal University and Wonkwang University. A library of nearly four million volumes supports study.