Abdulgaleel Ahmed

Abdulgaleel Ahmed

Academic Mentor: Taoufik Ben-Amor, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University

Research Topic:

Issues in the Syntax of Modern Standard Arabic:    A Cartographic-Minimalist Account

Dr. Abdulgaleel Ahmed is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics and Phonetics. He earned his BA in English Language and Literature from Taiz University (TU). Afterwards, he moved to India and completed his MA and PhD in Linguistics and Phonetics from the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) in Hyderabad, India. He has a Postgraduate Diploma in Translation from the EFL University as well. Dr. Abdulgaleel also earned his CELTA Certificate in Teaching English Language to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Cambridge in the UK.

His research interest areas include, but not limited to, Theoretic Linguistics, Contrastive Linguistics English-Arabic, Arabic Language, Identity & Religion, Syntax and its interfaces, Discourse Analysis, Optimality Theory, Corpus Linguistics, Cartographic-Minimalist Approach, TESOL, and Applied linguistics. He has also done extensive research on the structure of MSA. Dr. Abdulgaleel is a linguist whose research and writing spans the significant role of language in the process of integration and settlement of refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants, especially those from the MENA region.

Prior to joining the Columbia Global Centers | Amman as a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Abdulgaleel was a faculty member in the Department of English Language and Literature in TU. His previous academic experience includes a 2-year post as a Teaching Assistant at TU. He is a member of The New University in Exile Consortium. Moreover, Dr. Abdulgaleel is a member of the Linguistic Society of Europe (SLE), the Linguistics Society of India (LSI), and the Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA).

His research at Columbia Global Centers | Amman investigates the syntactic structure of some linguistic phenomena in MSA. A hybrid approach of Minimalist Programme and Cartographic analysis will be utilized to explore the syntactic features of the phenomena under investigation.

Awards and Grants:

  • 2020 – 2021   Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities.
  • 2016 – 2018   Senior Research Fellowship (SRF), University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, India.
  • 2013 – 2015   Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, India.
  • 2010 – 2012   Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Scholarship, New Delhi, India.