Mahmoud Azaz

Mahmoud is a Tenure-Track Associate Professor of Arabic Language, Linguistics, and Pedagogy in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Also, he is the University of Arizona Distinguished Fellow (Center for University Education Scholarship) and an affiliate at the Doctorate Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching and holds a courtesy appointment at the Department of Linguistics. Recently, he has been elected as the Arabic Sector Head by the American Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of Language Programs.

Mahmoud holds a Ph.D. with Distinction in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona. He taught Arabic at the University of Arizona and California State University in Chico, and linguistics at Ain Shams University in Cairo. His research interests include linguistic approaches to Arabic second language acquisition, Arabic pedagogy and program administration, and Arabic sociolinguistics. Articles by Dr. Azaz were published in journals such as the Modern Language Journal (MLJ, Wiley), Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism (LAB, John Benjamins), System (Elsevier), Second Language Research (SLR, sage), the International Journal of Applied Linguistics (IJAL, Wiley), the Foreign Language Annals (FLAN, Wiley), Al-ʿArabiyya (Georgetown University Press), and Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL).  

Mahmoud was awarded the 2017 SBS Dean's Award for Excellence in Lower Division Teaching and the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award by the University of Arizona; the Top Research Proposal Award by the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF); and Distinguished Lecturer Award in Linguistics from Ain Shams University in Egypt. Mahmoud is also a professional bidirectional translator (Arabic-English); he translated Anthony Gorman’s Historians, State, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Routledge) into Arabic and he is currently translating into Arabic Yasir Suleiman’s The Arabic Language and National Identity. Dr. Azaz gave several conference presentations in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL), the Second Language Acquisition Forum (SLRF), and Arabic Linguistics Society (ALS). Mahmoud was pleased to receive multiple research grants from the University of Arizona that support his current research program in Arabic SLA and sociolinguistics. These include the Faculty Seed Grant (Office for Research & Discovery); the Confluence Grant (Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry); and Research Professorship Grant (Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute); and most recently Distinguished Fellowship (Center for University Education Scholarship).