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Dr Reza Arab is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the School of Languages and Cultures. His expertise lies in pragmatics, cultural linguistics, and intercultural communication, with a focus on how humour, metaphor, and language practices shape belonging, identity, and interaction across cultural and institutional contexts.

His research spans historical pragmatics, contrastive semantics, and discourse analysis, particularly in national settings. He has led and contributed to projects on humour in prison discourse, media representations, and political communication. Dr Arab is also the major convenor for English as an International Language (EIL) at UQ.

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ (since 2017), having formerly been an assistant professor at the Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES), University of Hong Kong (since 2014). I hold an MA TESOL from the University of London and an M.Phil/Ph.D in applied linguistics from the University of Cambridge.

My areas of research and supervisory expertise include generative AI, corpus linguistics and the use of AI/corpora for language learning (known as 'data-driven learning'), as well as L2 writing research and English for General and Specific Academic Purposes. I have featured in Stanford's Top 2% Scientists lists for 2023 and 2024.

I am currently Co-Editor in Chief of Language Learning & Technology (SSCI, Q1); Editor in Chief of the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (SCOPUS, Q1), have served as Associate Editor for the Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Q1), sit on the editorial boards of JSLW, IRAL, System, Applied Corpus Linguistics, Research Syntheses in Applied Linguistics, Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, and the book series Studies in Corpus Linguistics.

I'm a Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Queensland, where I use computational methods and large text and speech corpora to study how English is actually used — in everyday conversation, across social groups, and by learners.

My research focuses on features that traditional grammars overlook but that shape real communication: discourse markers (like, you know), general extenders, terms of address, vulgarity, and adjective amplification. I also work in corpus phonetics, particularly vowel production and voice-onset timing in first- and second-language English speakers.

Alongside my research, I hold several roles focused on language research infrastructure:

• Director of Research, School of Languages and Cultures, UQ
• Director of the Language Technology and Data Analysis Laboratory (LADAL), a free open-access hub for language data science (https://ladal.edu.au/)
• Chief Investigator on the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA), a national research infrastructure project (https://www.ldaca.edu.au/)

I'm also an advocate for reproducibility and open science in the humanities and social sciences, and I develop tools and workflows that make text and speech analysis more transparent and rigorous.

Research areas: applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, language variation and change, learner corpus research, corpus pragmatics, reproducibility, digital humanities.