M. Monville-Burston did undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) in Classics (1964-1966). She then pursued her graduate studies in general linguistics at Cornell University, USA (MA 1974, Ph-D 1977). She taught general linguistics, French linguistics and the French language at Monash University, La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne, from 1977 to 2000, in Melbourne, Australia, and at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA, from 2001 to 2005. From 2005 she took the position of Associate Professor, then Professor, of French Linguistics at the University of Cyprus, in Nicosia. She retired in 2010.
She is now an Honorary Research Fellow in the Language Center.

Her present research interests include:

• In applied linguistics: the acquisition of French grammar and discourse (particularly in the Cypriot context), evaluation, teacher training.
• In French and general linguistics: grammatical semantics (tense-aspect-mood); discourse analysis and pragmatics; history of linguistics (She is the co-editor of the History of Linguistics volume to be published by the Cambridge University Press).