Dr. Farhat Abdullah has an active career in teaching and research spanning over a decade, with experience in various roles at higher education institutions. In 2018, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan awarded her a Faculty Development Program Scholarship for her PhD studies. She also undertook a research fellowship at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, where she also gained teaching experience at the undergraduate level.
She has presented research papers at numerous international conferences, both in Pakistan and abroad. She was awarded the HEC International Travel Grant twice-once in 2013 (0.17 million PKR) and again in 2016 (0.5 million PKR). In 2016, she attended the prestigious biennial flagship research event of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Collaborative Language Research (CoLang 2016), in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. This event contributed to her certification in language documentation. She earned an internal LSA grant of 0.2 million PKR to cover the registration charges for the LSA practicum. Later, she was selected for the Pop-Up Mentoring Program sponsored by LSA at SALT 31 and FASL 30, conferences organized by Brown University and MIT, USA, respectively.
She also contributed to the DAAD-funded Urdu WordNet project (2012) as a linguist. She joined the University of Central Punjab (UCP), Lahore, as a permanent faculty member in 2013 and has since taught a range of linguistics courses, including Introduction to Language Studies, Sociolinguistics, Semantics, TESOL, and Forensic Linguistics. Her teaching abilities, discipline, and innovative pedagogical skills were recognized with the Best Faculty Teacher Award in 2021.
She has been serving as an executive board member of the Forum for Language Initiative, a non-governmental organization that supports regional language communities in collaboration with international funding agencies, since 2021, providing consultancy services to the organization.
In addition to her academic achievements, Dr. Farhat Abdullah has demonstrated strong leadership and managerial skills by organizing poster presentations, seminars, and study tours for the English Department within the Faculty of Languages and Literature UCP, Lahore. As the founder of the Tekhleeq-registered start-up AnarkaliStore.com, she is now exploring her entrepreneurial skills.