Dr Sheng-hsun Lee

I am an applied linguist specializing in intercultural and public health communication. I am deeply engaged in using multimodal discourse analysis to understand how language, gestures, eye gaze, and material objects co-create meaning in social life. Previously, I investigated the processes of language and cultural learning while studying abroad or in classroom settings.

My recent work focuses on communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have published in top-tier international journals on public health topics, including mask wearing as well as reporting and narrating pandemic events. My COVID-19 project draws on over 600 hours of press-conference recordings and more than two million public online comments to understand what worked and did not in public health crisis communication. The project received the 2021 Humanities Traveling Fellowship from the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2025, I published a research monograph, Health crisis communication: Multimodal classification for pandemicpreparedness. The book explores multimodal classification's role in promoting pandemic preparedness and offers a list of ready-to-use strategies for explaining pandemic categories to public audiences.

My new project explores the communication of food safety crises, such as the mushroom poisoning in Australia and the rice-noodle poisoning in Taiwan. I am writing my second monograph titled Numbers talk in health crisis discourse. The book will show how during public health emergencies, such as a mass food-poisoning incident, public health professionals used communication to infuse statistics with qualitative meanings. Through talk about numbers, the professionals shape social perception of and response to a health emergency. I aim to use my research to help health professionals effectively communicate public health and update health communication guidelines.

I am available to supervise PhD/MPhil/Honours projects on the following topics: health discourses, intercultural communication, and language learning and teaching. Please contact me to discuss your proposal.