George A. Kiraz has taught Syriac language and literature at Princeton University, the University of Cambridge (UK), Beth Mardutho, the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Rutgers University, and the POLIS Institute in Jerusalem, guiding students from first encounters with the alphabet through advanced readings in classical and liturgical texts. His teaching is grounded in a lifetime of immersion in the language — from learning Syriac as a boy at the Monastery of Saint Mark in Jerusalem, to earning advanced degrees in Syriac Studies from Oxford and in Computational Linguistics from Cambridge. As author of New Syriac Primer, one of the most widely used introductory textbooks in the field, George has helped shape how a generation of students first learns Syriac, combining rigorous grammar instruction with deep familiarity with the language's literary, liturgical, and manuscript traditions.
