Her research focus for her doctorate centered on the design and teaching of writing courses for English-medium universities. Specifically, it involved understanding postgraduate assessments to create a postgraduate EAP writing curriculum more applicable to postgraduate degree-specific writing assessments. Furthermore, in terms of curriculum development, she is interested in corpus linguistics to develop and make practical changes to classroom materials and re-evaluate goals for learning outcomes. She previously worked to develop a learner corpus at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU).
She has extensive experience teaching English and several years of educational leadership experience, most of which has been at the tertiary level. In addition, she has served as an associate editor and peer reviewer of the journal English Teaching in China (ETiC). While at XJTLU, she was a module leader for the postgraduate EAP program and served on the university's postgraduate scholarship review panel. She has also been a member of various teaching and learning committees.
Shelmerdine has a B.A. in philosophy from Agnes Scott College, an M.A. in applied linguistics for language teaching from Southampton University, and an Ed.D. from the University of Liverpool. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was an assistant professor at Bryant University, Zhuhai.