Researcher, teacher, and writer

I'm a computational linguist and Associate Professor at Mashriq University, where I direct the Language & Society Lab. My research asks a deceptively simple question: when machines read Arabic, whose Arabic do they understand?

Most language technology is trained on formal Modern Standard Arabic, yet most people speak, post, and argue in dialects. That gap shapes everything from content moderation to how misinformation is detected — or missed. My lab builds open datasets and models for dialectal Arabic, and studies how false claims travel across Arabic-language platforms.

Alongside peer-reviewed work, I write essays for general readers on AI, media, and the politics of digital archives. I believe research earns its keep when it's understood outside the seminar room, so I spend a good part of each year speaking with journalists, policymakers, and students.

Before Mashriq, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Northbridge University's Language Technologies Group, where I also completed my PhD. I teach courses on natural language processing, research methods, and ethics in computing.