Meet Dr Suzanne Kobeisse

I grew up in Lebanon, where Arabic was the language of home, of family, of every argument and every story. I moved between Levantine dialect at home and Modern Standard Arabic at school, switching almost without noticing, the way you might switch shoes going from garden to kitchen. That love of language, the feel of it in the mouth, the pull of the right word at the right moment, has stayed with me throughout my life.

I later came to the UK to continue my academic work, completing my Masters and then my PhD. I am now a University Lecturer and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and alongside my academic career I have been teaching private Arabic lessons for over a decade. That dual life, one foot in formal scholarship and the other in living rooms on a Tuesday evening, is the combination I love most.

My students are adults who have chosen Arabic for their own reasons. A professional wanting to speak confidently with in-laws. A parent supporting a GCSE student at home. A heritage speaker reconnecting with a childhood language. A traveller who wants to order coffee in Amman without reverting to English. I plan carefully around each of them, and I try to bring the same warmth to a beginner's first alphabet lesson as I do to an advanced reading of a poem. Academic rigour meets a conversational classroom, and that mix is what I enjoy most about this work.