Meng Qingnan (Jack) holds a PhD in linguistics from Shanghai International Studies University (China) in 2019, and is currently a visiting scholar under the supervision of Professor Martin Hilpert, funded by China Scholarship Council (CSC). He is mainly interested in quantitative approaches to linguistic studies. His PhD dissertation is about the constructional changes of English marginal auxiliaries. Before his arrival, he was an associate professor at Dalian Maritime University (China), and has taught various courses such as English grammar, introduction to corpus linguistics, special topics on linguistics, and academic writing.

His current research interest is token-based vector space models on English modality, especially on the constructional alternation of central and marginal modals, as well as variation in the productivity of schematic semi-auxiliary constructions.