Mahbod Ghaffari

Dr Mahbod Ghaffari is an Associate Professor in Persian Language, Linguistics, and Culture at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He serves as a Bye-Fellow at Fitzwilliam College and acts as its Director of Studies for Persian-related subjects. His research focuses on applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, and Persian language acquisition, with a particular emphasis on developing innovative teaching tools and collaborative research projects like the Cambridge-Belgrade Persian Learner Corpus (CAMBEL). He has extensive experience teaching Persian language and literature, including roles at the University of Allameh Tabatabaei and Shahid Beheshti University in Iran, and served as a Persian Examiner for the University of Westminster before joining Cambridge.

• Education: BA in Translation (Iran), MA in Teaching Persian (Iran), PhD in Linguistics (Iran), Oxford Leadership in Higher Education Certificate, and a 6-month intensive course on Iranian Culture and Civilization.

His work combines classical Persian literature with modern pedagogical approaches, emphasizing the role of multimedia and online platforms in language education. He recently co-launched the CAMBEL project’s first phase in 2023 and is authoring a Persian grammar textbook. Ghaffari has contributed to publications such as the Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy in Persian and presented at conferences including the 4th International Conference on Teaching Persian Language and Literature. His research also explores the intersection of language, culture, and identity in Iranian contexts, along with historical studies of Persian’s linguistic evolution.

Recipient of the 2024 Pilkington Prize recognizing his teaching excellence, Ghaffari’s projects aim to support Persian language educators globally. His ongoing work includes advancing CAMBEL to its second phase and analyzing learner corpus data for pedagogical insights. He teaches undergraduate courses in Persian language, linguistics, and Iranian cinema while maintaining active collaboration with academic institutions in Europe and the Middle East.