Neda Zafaranian has a Doctorate in Second Language Education from the University of Houston. She joins the Program in Writing and Communication in fall of 2026 as a lecturer after teaching in the Intensive English Program at Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice University for over 18 years. Prior to coming to Rice, she taught ESL at Austin Community College, The American Intercontinental University in London, U.K., and The American Language Center in Damascus, Syria. 

In addition to teaching at Rice, she has been teaching English at the Houston Grand Opera to the international artists for the last two years. 

Originally from Iran, Dr. Zafaranian has been based in Houston since 1981. Her doctoral dissertation, which she presented at the International Pragmatics Association in Budapest, Hungary in 2000, was on Persian-English code-switching patterns and their relation to the acculturation process of Iranians living in the U.S.A. She has presented on the topic of intercultural communication and sensitivity at various conferences, including the TESOL International Association in 2019, where she co-presented “East Meets West: Intercultural Competence for Teaching Asians and Arabs.”