Farah Ali, Ph.D.

Background

Originally from St. Louis, MO, I studied at the University of Missouri-Columbia (lovingly known as Mizzou) and earned my B.A. in linguistics and history. After a couple of gap years that were predominantly spent working as a group exercise instructor, I continued my studies at Mizzou and completed my M.A. in Spanish. I later earned my Ph.D. in Spanish linguistics at the University at Albany, SUNY. Currently, I am Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at DePauw University, where I teach Spanish and linguistics and am serving as director of the Hispanic Studies Program.

When I’m not busy with academic activities, I love reading, traveling, hiking, and losing myself in creative pursuits such as writing, painting, and playing the piano and guitar.

Research

My research, grounded in qualitative approaches, investigates the relationship between language and identity in multilingual contexts. My primary research areas are sociolinguistics and second/heritage language acquisition and pedagogy. 

My sociolinguistic work examines how identity is constructed through language, particularly in migration and diaspora contexts. My first book, Multilingualism and Gendered Immigrant Identity: Perspectives from Catalonia (Multilingual Matters, 2022) analyzed how Muslim immigrant women in Catalonia negotiate their gendered and religious identities. This project expanded into broader interests in Arabic-Spanish contact, migration in Spain, and the use of text-based analyses (language policy, new media) to understand linguistic ideologies. These interests culminated in my second book, Policy, Media, and the Shaping of Spain-Morocco Relations: Discursive Representations of Migration to Ceuta and Melilla (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), which explores how media discourse on undocumented migration impacts Morocco-Spain political relations.

Within S/HLA, I apply sociolinguistic frameworks to language learning, focusing on the role of identity and learner attitudes. I also examine and develop pedagogies that center language as a social practice, shaped by the cultural and political histories of its speakers. Relevant publications include A Critical Review of Multilingual and Multidialectal Approaches to Heritage and L2 Arabic Instruction (Critical Multilingualism Studies, 2024) and Teaching the Sociopolitics of Spanish: Language Pedagogy from a Sociolinguistic Lens (Narratives of Non-English L2 Language Teachers, Routledge, 2025)

You can follow my work (and access most of it) on Academia and ResearchGate.