Chad Diehl is director of the Language Commons and a Senior Instructional Designer with A&S Learning Design & Technology. He works primarily with instructors who teach courses in world languages and literatures to find opportunities for innovation within and outside of the classroom.

Chad received his Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in 2011 with a focus on Japanese history. Since then he has taught broadly on the history and literature of East Asia, including courses here at UVA on topics related to Japan ranging from the memory of WWII, postwar film, democracy, and gender and sexuality. In 2018, Chad published a book based on years of archival research he conducted while living in Japan, titled, Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives (link). Chad speaks Japanese and has also studied Mandarin Chinese and German. He is also a practitioner of judo, attaining the level of nidan (second-degree blackbelt) in Japan from the Kodokan before retiring from the sport in 2008.