M'Balia Thomas

M'Balia Thomas is a tenured Associate Professor at The University of Arizona. She is a faculty member of the English Applied Linguistics Program (MATESOL) in the Department of English and a Regular Faculty Member of the Interdisciplinary doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching (SLAT).

M'Balia is a Critical Applied Linguist whose research investigates the linguistic injustices committed against “non-native” and “non-standard” speakers of American English and the everyday creative practices these speakers adopt to resist and address linguistic injustices. Her research draws upon a variety of qualitative research methods, including thematic, discourse, conversation, narrative, rhetorical-stylistics, text world theory, and corpus-based analyses. Through the study of written/spoken language—including the language of fictional learners and teachers—her work demonstrates that it is possible to gain insight into learning, teaching, and assessment and the ideologies that shape and impede each.

M'Balia is currently working on a digital humanities recovery project entitled, "Forgotten everyday writers: A history of Black writing in Lawrence, Kansas (1860s-1920s)".