Junyuan Chen is originally from Hunan, China. She is now a Ph.D. candidate majoring in Japanese linguistics and minoring in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching. She is also teaching JPN 201 currently.

She received her B.A. in Japanese Language and Culture from Zhejiang University in China and her M.A. in Japanese linguistics from Kyushu University in Japan. Her current research interests include Japanese sociolinguistics, teaching Japanese as a foreign/second language and positioning analysis, with a special focus on Japanese language teacher identities and teacher education.