Reza Ghahramani

Job title: 
Lecturer in Persian; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Department: 
Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures
Bio/CV: 

Born in Shiraz, Iran, Reza Ghahramanifirst started to learn German after High school on his own and quickly grew to love the German language, and eventually decided to earn two bachelor’s degrees at once: one in German Language and Literature from the Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) and one in the Applied Translation (German-Persian) from the Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch (IAUCTB) both in Tehran. 

Ghahramani continued his education at the Tarbiat Modares University (TBU) in Tehran receiving a M.A. in German Pedagogy with a MA thesis entitled “Kafka’s parables and how to apply them in Teaching German at the university level."

He began his career working as a lecturer in diverse subjects ranging from the German language to Tourism Management, and also as a freelance tour manager, worked extensively with German-speaking groups on their cultural visits to Iran, and as a translator for over 25 years in Iran. 

In 2010, Ghahramani immigrated with his family to the USA, where he started to teach the Persian language at the University of California, Berkeley. Beside teaching Persian, he taught the German language (high intermediate level for adults) at the GISSV in Mountain View in 2015.

 In 2017, he served as a German-speaking Tour Manager, handling customized group tours from German-speaking countries in Iran. 

In 2018, he started again to teach languages (both Persian and German) in California. And since Spring 2018, he has been teaching the German language (Adult & 6 grader) at the German School of the East Bay (Saturday School GSEB) in Oakland.  

Beyond his teaching experience in the United States, he also worked as a Persian analyst for the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley to develop software capable of identifying metaphors in any given text. At ICSI, he mainly researched and annotated metaphors in the Persian language. 

In his free time, Ghahramani enjoys reading and translating German literary texts such as short stories, novels, and poems, and learning languages. His publications include translations of modern German short stories, poetry, and literary articles on German-speaking writers in Persian.