The School of Asian and African Studies (originally the Department of Asian and African Languages) was founded in 1961. At present, the school has set up 17 majors in foreign languages: Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Burmese, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Sinhalese, Korean, Turkish, Swahili, Hausa, Hindi, Urdu, Hebrew, Persian and Tagalog. Therefore it boasts the longest history and most disciplines in foreign languages nationwide.
With the approval of the Ministry of Education, its predecessor, the Department of Asian and African Languages established the National Non-Universal Languages Undergraduate Personnel Training Bases in 2001, and was listed into “the Project of Higher Education Reform in the New Century”. The MOE and the Beijing Municipal Government have approved the construction of characteristic discipline in the School of Asian and African Studies respectively in 2007 and 2008. Besides, there are several research centers in the School of Asian and African Studies, such as the Research Centers for Southeastern Asian Studies, Southern Asian Studies, Western Asian and African Studies and Korean-North Korean Studies.
The School has a strong faculty team with lots of teaching experiences and enthusiasm for the instruction of non-universal languages. Now the number of the instructors is forty-five, among whom professors and associate professors account for 40%. Apart from seven to eight visiting foreign experts, there are also a number of domestic and foreign specialists and scholars invited to work as a visiting professor. The School is specialized in the teaching and research of Asian, African languages and literature, cultural studies, and translation theory and practice.