She obtained her M.phil and doctorate from Oxford University in Arabic lingustics. She has taught Arabic language and linguistics at UK and USA universities including, Cambridge, Oxford and Utah as well as the Foreign and Commonwealth office in the UK. She has 14 years of experience of teaching Arabic and linguistics. Her academic books include, Functions of Code-switching in Egypt (2006), Arabic sociolinguistics (2008), Arabic and the media (2010). She has published numerous articles on Arabic lingusitics topics including code-switching, Language and gender, levelling, register, Arabic and advertisements, linguistics and literature and language policies in the Arab world.