The Institute of Applied Linguistics (IAL) was founded in June 2021 with 12 research fellows, including two associate professors and 4 PhD holders. The current director is Zhu Xiaoli, an Associate Professor of the Department of English.

The Institute aims to promote research in applied linguistics and conduct exchanges with academic groups and colleagues at home and abroad. The research areas mainly include functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, ESP/EAP, and English-Chinese comparison.