Members and their profile
ASHRAF ABDELHAY
Ashraf Abdelhay holds a PhD in the field of sociolinguistics from the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the cultural politics of language in Sudan with specific emphasis on the intersection of discourse, ideology and power relations. He worked for the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in the University of Edinburgh, and then joined the Department of Middle Eastern Studies in University of Cambridge as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow (2009-2010); and Clare Hall College in the University of Cambridge as a Research Associate (2019-2013). He currently works for the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (Qatar) as an Associate Professor in the programme of Linguistics and Arabic Lexicography.
Email contact: aschraff200@gmail.com
CRISTINE GORSKI SEVERO
With two PH.Ds at Federal University of Santa Catarina, one in Linguistics (2007) and a second one in Interdisciplinary Studies (2018), Cristine has conquered experience conducting university-based research on the topics of colonial linguistics, language policy, African languages and resistance. Some of the works supervised by her include the political role played by Portuguese and local languages in colonial era in African and Asian Portuguese former colonies. Several publications have resulted from these supervised works and from personal and collective research. Since 2010 her research has focused on how languages can help us to understand colonialism, power relation and struggles for independence in former Portuguese colonies. She also pursues and prioritizes a critical perspective, which means to make an intellectual effort to submit what we understand as language to collective and moving modes of historical existence. Her research experience include both individual research of primary sources in Portuguese and Spanish language related to colonization, and collective research towards a comparative perspective involving colonial experience and forms of resistance though language. Collective research includes joint work with Angolan and Mozambican researchers.
Email contact: crisgorski@gmail.com
SINFREE MAKONI
Sinfree Makoni is a Professor at the Pennsylvania State University and is currently a Distinguished Scholar in the Graduate School of Education of the same University. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh and also holds degrees from the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. His areas of specialisation are discourses of terrorism outside the United States, theory and practices of language policy and planning, and philosophies of language and language and health in Africa. Professor Makoni has published a number of academic articles and books on language policy and planning, among them Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages (2006), co-edited with Alastair Pennycook, and Language and Aging in Multilingual Contexts (2005), co-authored with Kees De Bot.
Email contact: sbm12@psu.edu