Kimi Kondo-Brown

Dr. Kimi Kondo-Brown is a Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She holds affiliations in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese BA, MA, PhD programs) and serves as Cooperating Graduate Faculty in the Department of Second Language Studies (PhD in SLS). Her research focuses on Japanese as a Heritage Language, language assessment, and curriculum development.

Education: PhD in Education (UHM), MA in Linguistics (University of Utah). She leads initiatives in heritage language education, publishing widely on language testing, curriculum design, and multilingual education. Key works include Japanese as a Heritage Language (Cambridge 2024) and Introduction to Assessment for Japanese Teachers (reprinted 2022). She directs assessment institutes and collaborates with international scholars like Emeritus Prof. James Brown.

Research emphasizes heritage language maintenance and post-pandemic language testing. She co-edits peer-reviewed volumes on assessment modules and serves on editorial boards. Her work bridges theoretical linguistics with practical pedagogy, addressing needs of heritage speakers and global language learners.

Grants and awards include contributions to the National Foreign Languages Resource Center. She advises on curriculum alignment and assessment frameworks, with a focus on equity in language education. Her legacy includes over 30 publications and 25 years of teaching Japanese and SLA methodologies.