Georgetown’s Reem Bassiouney Gives Keynote at Qatar University

SFS-Q is pleased to announce the recent visit to Doha of Reem Bassiouney, associate professor of Arabic linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Dr. Bassiouney was a keynote speaker at Qatar University’s fourth conference on Linguistics in the Gulf on March 17-18, 2013. Her keynote speech was about “Arabic Indexes Amidst a Nation and a Nation-State: Ideologies, Attitudes and Linguistic Realities.”

“I was really honored and delighted to be part of this important event,” said Dr. Bassiouney. “I had the chance to meet excellent scholars in the field. There is an urgent need for more studies on language variation and change in the Gulf, and of linguistics of the Gulf more generally. This conference inspires scholars with more ideas and also provides a platform to exchange ideas and suggestions for future research.”

In addition to her many academic successes, Dr. Bassiouney is also an award-winning novelist who is perhaps best-known for her book The Pistachio Seller. An Egyptian author, she has written several novels and a number of short stories. She won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers for her novel Dr. Hanaa.

A truly international scholar, Dr. Bassiouney explained that she enjoys coming to the region very much and has visited the Gulf three times. With each visit she is even more impressed with the hard work on all levels by scholars in Qatar.

“I definitely take advantage to connect with scholars in Qatar and the Georgetown campus here, which is a second home to me,” said Dr. Bassiouney. “In fact it is where I meet some of my former students and colleagues. I like to hear about their experiences in Qatar, which can contribute more to our understanding as linguists of the region. I also like to know about the cultural and scientific activities of faculty here.”

Dr. Bassiouney earned her doctorate from Oxford University and has written a number of scholarly articles and books, including the first introduction to the field of Arabic sociolinguistics. She has shown how sociolinguistic theories can be applied to Arabic and what the study of Arabic can contribute to understanding the function of language in society.