Karin Ryding is professor emerita of Arabic linguistics in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. She holds a B.A. from Middlebury College, M.A. from The American University of Beirut, and Ph.D. from Georgetown University. From 1980-86, she was head of Arabic training at the State Department=s Foreign Service Institute. From 1995-98 she served as Dean of Interdisciplinary Programs at Georgetown University. From 1991-1995, 1998-2000 and from 2002-2004, she was chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown. From 1995-2008, she held the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professorship of Arabic. Principal publications include A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Formal Spoken Arabic: Basic Course (Georgetown University Press,1990, second edition, 2005), Formal Spoken Arabic: FAST Course (Georgetown University Press, 1993, reprint, 2004).

Ryding is serving a two-year term as president of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA), 2007-2008. From 2005-07, she was principal investigator and project adviser to the Arabic Language Flagship Project at Georgetown, a full-year, intensive Arabic program to bring students from the intermediate to advanced or superior level of proficiency. She currently serves on the Academic Council of the Arabic Overseas Flagship Program. Ryding was a member of the MLA=s Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) Executive Committee from 1995-98, and on the MLA Ad-Hoc Committee for Foreign Languages from 2004-06. She currently sits on the national advisory board of the National Middle East Language Resource Center (NMELRC), on the Arabic language advisory board of AMIDEAST Education Abroad Programs, on the advisory committee for the Concordia Arabic Language Village (Al-Wâ?a), on the board of directors of Georgetown University Press and the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC).