Ali Reza Majlesi

Academic Background

• Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary area of "Language and Culture, " specializing in "Language and Social Interaction, " from Linköping University (2014).
• Associate Professorship in Education from Stockholm University (2022).
• Since 2025, I have been working as a Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Pathology at Karolinska Institutet.

Research Profile

I began as a linguist specializing in the social aspects of language use, learning and development in talk-in-interaction. I apply ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) to everyday and institutional activities, including professional practices within pedagogical and clinical contexts. My research focuses on human sociality, actions, sense-making, and the organization of knowledge and morality, through detailed analyses of practices, materialities, embodiment, and verbal-vocal resources.

My projects encompass multilingual, multicultural contexts such as classrooms, medical interactions, care settings, focusing both on human-human interactions as well as human-machine/robot interactions. I study professional and everyday practices in diverse populations, including first- and second-language users, as well as children and adults with varied cognitive and communicative abilities, such as individuals with dementia, aphasia, or different types of speech and language pathologies.

Research Projects

1. “Empowering Cultural Integration and Language Learning through Conversational AI”
   PI: Gabriel Skantze, KTH | Financed by Digital Future/KTH | Grant number: KTH-RPROJ-0146472 | Duration: 2024-2025
2. “Interaction with Social Robots for Education: Robot-Assisted Learning for Students with Diverse Language Backgrounds”
   PI: Ali Reza Majlesi (SU/KI) | Financed by Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) | Grant number: 2022–03265 | Duration: 2023-2025
3. “Planning for a Digital Academy for Welfare Technologies in Dementia Care”
   PI: Christina Samuelsson, KI | Financed by FORTE (Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare) | Grant number: 022-01319 | Duration: 2023-2024
4. “Culturally Informed Robots in Learning Activities (CIRILA)”
   PI: Olov Engwall (KTH) | Financed by the Wallenberg Foundations (MAW) | Grant number: MAW 2020.0052 | Duration: 2021-2023
5. “A Research Collaboration in Learning, Interaction and Technology”
   PI: Ali Reza Majlesi (SU) | Financed by Stockholm University, Collaboration between Profile Areas | Grant number: SU FV-2.1.1-0086-19 | Duration: 2019-2021
6. “Life with Dementia: Communication, Relation and Cognition”
   PI: Lars-Christer Hydén (LiU) | Financed by FORTE (Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare) | Grant number: 2016–07207 | Duration: 2017–2022
7. “The Language Café as a Social Venue and a Space for Language Training”
   PI: Gunilla Jansson (SU) | Financed by Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) | Grant number: 2017–033628 | Duration: 2018–2021

I have extensive experience teaching within various scientific fields of linguistics, education, and communication at undergraduate and graduate levels at institutions such as Stockholm University, Linköping University, and from January 2025 at Karolinska Institutet. My courses cover topics such as general linguistics, sociolinguistics, language learning and development, speech and language pathology, conversation analysis as a theory and method, and multimodal analysis of social interactions.

I have designed and taught graduate courses on Learning, Interaction and Multilingualism and Inclusion and Exclusion in Healthcare, as well as undergraduate courses on Professional Communication, Conversation Analayis and General Linguistics. My interdisciplinary, research-driven approach emphasizes video-based multimodal analysis of social activities, particularly in multilingual, multicultural contexts.