Language, Meaning, and AI Systems
Exploring how meaning is represented across human language and artificial intelligence.
Linguist, AI Researcher, and Interdisciplinary Scholar
I study language, artificial intelligence, culture, and meaning — especially the places where conventional categories break down.
My work spans linguistic theory, multilingual and low-resource NLP, culturally responsive AI, narrative analysis, AI evaluation, and educational technology. I’m particularly interested in questions that require crossing disciplinary boundaries, challenging assumptions, and examining what happens at the margins: languages, cultures, communities, and forms of knowledge that mainstream technology often overlooks.
My intellectual foundation is linguistics, but my work moves between theory and computation, research and application, language and society. I’m interested not only in how AI systems process language, but in what they represent, what they miss, and what those failures reveal about both technology and human meaning.
Through the Zoorna Institute for Language, AI and Society, I lead research and educational initiatives in multilingual AI, low-resource languages, cultural understanding, and broader access to AI.
Across my work, I’m most at home where disciplines, ideas, cultures, and communities meet.
What I Work On
Language & AI Systems
Exploring how linguistic structure, semantics, and meaning representation shape the design, behavior, and evaluation of AI systems.
Low-Resource & Multilingual AI
Developing linguistically and culturally grounded approaches to AI for underrepresented languages, with a focus on the languages of the Middle East and the Caucasus.
Culture, Context & Meaning
Studying how AI systems interpret social and cultural meaning across languages, including questions of pragmatics, bias, contextual fit, and cross-cultural alignment.
Language Learning & Education
Applying linguistic theory and AI to heritage language analysis, multilingual pedagogy, adaptive instruction, curriculum development, and culturally informed educational technologies.
Ideas Across Boundaries
Investigating questions that sit between established fields where linguistics, AI, cognition, culture, social systems, and history illuminate one another.
Selected Talks & Publications
AI is Deciding Our Lives. Are Women Deciding AI?
Invited Talk
March 2026
Invited talk, FEMINNO Armenia CSW70 Parallel Event, part of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women
A global virtual event contributing to the development of a Feminist AI Manifesto. The talk focused on the role of data, representation, and language in shaping AI systems, and the risks of exclusion for women and low-resource language communities.
Linguistic Data-Driven Approach to Persian Language Pedagogy: Practical Application to Compound Verbs
Book Chapter
Coming Soon.
In Persian Language Pedagogy: New Trends and Innovations. Routledge.
This chapter introduces a collaborative program of practice, which advocates for the integration of linguistic theory, formal language acquisition research, and Artificial Intelligence-driven approaches within the Persian language teaching curriculum. [book information]
We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof
Publication
September 2025
Empirical Methods in NLP (EMNLP). Suzhou, China.
Large language models (LLMs) struggle to navigate culturally specific communication norms, such as the Persian taarof, a social norm in Iranian interactions, limiting their effectiveness in global contexts. [read paper]
AI-enabled narrative analytics for Persian and Kurdish.
Conference Presentation
May 2025
4th North American Conference on Iranian Linguistics (NACIL4), University of Toronto Mississauga.
Presented novel methods for extracting narrative structures from multilingual texts, showcasing advances in NLP for Persian and Kurdish low-resource languages. [learn more]
My journey in AI: A perspective on the role of women in Artificial Intelligence.
Invited Talk
March 2025.
Women's History Month program, Miami-Dade College.
My personal journey through computational linguistics and AI research, highlighting the obstacles women face in the field, from microaggressions to systemic pressures that push many to leave, and inspiring new pathways for women to lead and thrive in AI.
Research Highlights
For collaboration, research inquiries, or speaking engagements, please contact me.