Dr. Maha A. Aldawi holds an MA in Linguistics from the University of Khartoum and a PhD in Linguistics through a joint program between the University of Cologne, Germany, and the University of Khartoum, Sudan. From January 2024 to November 2025, she served as an IIE-SRF and SAR fellow, positioned as a Visiting Associate Research Scholar in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego, where she conducted research on Sudanese languages while collaborating on teaching Arabic courses. She is currently a visiting research scholar at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris, France.
From 2012 to 2021, she served as Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Khartoum, bringing over 15 years of experience teaching general linguistics courses and supervising graduate, master's, and PhD theses, alongside research on Sudanese languages since 2004. Between 2017 and 2021, she was a regional coordinator and participant in joint international projects between the Department of Linguistics at the University of Khartoum and LLACAN (UMR 8135, CNRS, France), focusing on the typological features of Sudanese languages and the influence of Arabic on these languages. Her research centers on documenting and raising awareness of Sudanese languages as cultural heritage, guided by the belief that language reflects the environment, culture, and identity of its speakers, and that describing and documenting these languages is a vital step toward developing writing systems that empower speech communities to preserve their linguistic and cultural resources. Her current project on the Rashad language reflects this commitment: she advocates for developing teaching materials so that local languages can eventually be taught in primary schools, helping protect them from extinction amid the strong influence of Arabic. She has published numerous articles on Sudanese languages in local, regional, and international journals..
