She is currently Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Full Professor (Director of Studies) of Tamazight Linguistics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

[1][2] Lafkioui received her PhD at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris, France, in 1999 with a thesis entitled, "Syntaxe intégrée de l'énoncé non-verbal berbère: Rifain d'Ayt Wayagher, Maroc du Nord".

[2][5][6] Lafkioui has published widely on the linguistics of the Berber languages and Arabic, writing mainly in English and French.

Her areas of interest include negation, information structure, sociolinguistics and dialectology.

[7] Her magnum opus and most-cited work[8] is her linguistic atlas of Berber varieties of the Rif: this has been described as "the most extensive atlas of dialect variation in Berber ever published" and "an essential reference for anyone interested in linguistic variation within Berber or across North Africa as a whole".