Zoliswa O. Mali

Zoliswa Mali earned her Ph.D. in second language acquisition focusing on linguistics and technology at the University of Iowa. She is especially interested in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and computer-mediated communication (CMC). She earned a MA (cum laude) in African languages (morphology and syntax) from the University of Stellenbosch, and a BA (Honors) from the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. She also obtained a MA in linguistics at the University of Iowa. Before coming to the United States, she had worked at The University of Fort Hare as a lecturer for isiXhosa linguistics and literature from 1989 to 2000. This was after a decade of teaching and being deputy principal in the primary school system of the Department of Education in South Africa. She also worked as a coordinator of an African Studies Summer Institute that Fort Hare hosted collaboratively with Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, and participated in the development of its curriculum in Andover in 1998. She also worked as Director for Group Projects Abroad (GPA) at Yale University for the summers of 2002 and 2003 working at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. She founded the isiZulu Program, which she taught at The University of Iowa from 2000 to 2006, and was later part of the formulation of an autonomous language learning network (ALLNet), in which she later served as a tutor for isiZulu, at The University of Iowa.

Dr. Zoli Mali has also been an instructor of isiZulu for intensive summer language programs, at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., as well as for the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). She joined Boston University in 2007 as Clinical Assistant Professor (at SED) and Coordinator of Southern African Languages (CAS) and is now a lecturer at CAS, in African Studies. She has served as a coordinator of language buddies for Project GO and has taught isiXhosa and isiZulu for BU’s Globally Speaking Program.