Hu Zhihong is a professor in the College of Humanities of Southwest Jiaotong University, a doctor of literature, a doctoral supervisor, an outstanding expert with outstanding contribution in Sichuan Province, a vice president of the Sichuan Comparative Literature Society, a council member of the Sichuan Social Science Federation, and a visiting scholar of the University of Idaho (on state assignment). He mainly engaged in the research and teaching of English and American literature and culture, comparative literature, and ecological criticism. He was awarded the first, second, and third prizes for outstanding academic achievements by the Sichuan Provincial People's Government.

He chaired and independently completed two National Social Science Foundation projects: "History of Western Ecocriticism" and "Research on the Theory of Ethnic Minority Ecocriticism in the United States".

He published monographs "Western Ecocriticism Studies" (2006) and "History of Western Ecocriticism" (2015), translation "Practical Ecocriticism" (2010), and textbook "Ecological Literature Course" (2021), and co-edited several books. He published nearly 100 papers in Chinese and English in various journals such as Social Science Front, Contemporary Foreign Literature, and Chinese and Foreign Culture and Literature, and many of them have been reprinted in full in Chinese and English by NPC Reprographic Materials and other publications.