Haidir Algi Gaffar Faridha is a 2026–2027 Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) from Indonesia, placed in the Department of Asian Studies. Originally from the Kutainese land of East Kalimantan, he currently serves as a lecturer at Universitas Kutai Kartanegara and Universitas Negeri Malang. His teaching and research focus on language learning, educational technology, inclusive pedagogy, and supporting students with Specific Learning Differences (SpLDs).

Haidir holds an M.Sc. with Merit in TESOL with Technology for Teaching from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he studied as a UK Chevening Scholar, and a B.Ed. with Honours in English Language Teaching from Universitas Negeri Malang. He has also completed pedagogical training at Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic and an academic fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, which catalysed his founding of Slow Learners Care, an initiative providing inclusive language education for neurodivergent students with SpLDs and slow learners.

His teaching philosophy is rooted in humanistic and communicative approaches, building learner-centred, multimodal classrooms where students engage with language through combinations of semiotic modes including linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and/or spatial, drawing on whichever senses and channels best serve the learner and the moment. Almost a decade, he has taught at 10+ language schools across Indonesia, trained more than 1,000 pre-service teachers on inclusive ELT in Pare Kediri, led DIY workshops for over 150 students with disabilities in Malang, East Java, and taught multilingual summer school cohorts at Dundee and Sussex Universities in the UK.

At Cornell, Haidir will assist in teaching Indonesian language and culture to American students while taking courses in cognitive science, American Sign Language, U.S. education policy, and educational psychology, all foundational to his doctoral research aspirations for language policies for diverse learners. Beyond the classroom, he looks forward to sharing his Kutainese heritage with the Cornell community through cultural performances, workshops, and storytelling, introducing students and colleagues to Kutainese traditional outfits, beadwork, snacks, recorder music, and the Trilogy Book of Kutainese Folklore, a multilingual audiobook project he is developing for children with dyslexia. He is delighted to join the SEAP community and learn from its scholars and programs.