The predecessor of the School of English and International Studies (SEIS) was the Department of English, founded in 1944. The SEIS takes the lead to confer the PhD degree in English and construct the characteristic discipline in Beijing. Moreover, the discipline of English Language and Literature has been ratified as a National Key Discipline and the whole school was granted as National Outstanding Teaching Team. Over a half century, many excellent diplomats, scholars and media elites have graduated from the SEIS.
There are three departments in the SEIS, namely the Department of English, the Department of International Journalism and Dissemination and the Department of Translation, as well as eleven research centers: Research Center for English and American Literature, Research Center for Linguistics, Research Center for Translation, Research Center for American Studies, Research Center for British Studies, Research Center for Australian Studies, Research Center for Canadian Studies, Research Center for Irish Studies, Research Center for Chinese-American Literature, Research Center for International Dissemination and Research Center for Intercultural Studies. Research fields of the English Language and Literature as a National Key Discipline are as follows: 1) English Literature Studies; 2) Linguistics and Teaching English as A Second Language; 3) Comparative Studies on English and Chinese as well as Translation Studies; 4) Studies on English-speaking Countries.
The SEIS has always attached great importance to international exchanges, so it has maintained good and long-term cooperation with lots of universities and academic institutes in Great Britain, U.S.A, Australia and Canada.
Now, the SEIS has 13 PhD qualified tutors, 19 professors and 38 associate professors. There are 61 teachers with a PhD degree, which accounts for 63% of the overall teaching staff.