I work where language learning, displacement, and technology meet.

I'm an applied linguist (PhD, Georgetown) and an educator in English as a second language and AI literacy. My work sits where language learning, generative AI, and equity meet — and it's grounded in the classroom, with the learners most often left out of new technology.

I grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Tucson, AZ for my MA, then to Georgetown for my doctorate. And somehwere along the way, teaching English to newly arrived adults stopped being a volunteering experience, and became the whole point.

Across teaching and research, I'm interested in what learners can do when instruction starts from their actual lives: work goals, family responsibilities, digital systems, institutional barriers, and the desire to participate more fully in a new community.

My current work asks how generative AI can be taught responsibly to multilingual adults — especially learners who are often left out of emerging-technology conversations.