Nahal Akbari

Lecturer
nakbaris@umd.edu

Nahal teaches Persian and collaborates in curriculum and materials development at the University of Maryland Persian program. She is currently completing her doctoral research in the area of writing in a second language.

Ali Reza Abasi

Academic Director
Phone: (301) 405-3315
aabasi@umd.edu

Ali Abasi teaches Persian as an additional language, and also directs curriculum and materials development for the Persian Flagship Program. His primary research interest is second language academic literacies.

Peyman Nojoumian

Lecturer
pnojoumi@umd.edu  

Peyman completed a BA in Translation Studies and earned his first MA in Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL) at Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran. Subsequently, he did his second Masters' in Speech and Language Technology at KULeuven, Belgium. He is currently a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Ottawa, Canada.    

Marzieh Tafaghod

Lecturer
tafaghod@umd.edu  

Marzieh is currently a PhD candidate in the field of Evaluation at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, where she received her Masters in Linguistics in 2003. She has also obtained a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics from Azad University, Tehran. She has been teaching graduate and undergraduate level Research and Methodology courses at different academic institutions including the University of Ottawa and Azad University since 1997. She has also more than 10 years of experience in teaching ESL/EFL courses. Her research interests include mixed methodology, program evaluation, multiple literacies, metacognition and listening comprehension.

Firoozeh Dianat

Research and Lab Assistant
fdianat@umd.edu

Firoozeh is the librarian and resource person in the Persian language lab. She also assists in the development of instructional materials. Currently she is working towards a PhD in comparative literature at Maryland’s Morgan University.