Alex Lascarides


Alexandra Lascarides is a linguist and chair in Semantics in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Her research investigates computational linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Early life and education

Lascarides graduated from Durham University where she was a student of Van Mildert College, Durham with a first-class degree in mathematics. She moved to the University of Edinburgh for her graduate studies, earning a master's degree in cognitive science in 1985. She stayed at Edinburgh for her doctoral research on semantic analysis.

Research and career

Her research investigates the semantics of communicative actions in conversation. She explored the science of conversation in the Logics of Conversation, and presented a framework known as Segmented Discourse Representation Theory to better understand linguistics and language.

Select publications

Lascarides’ publications include:
In 2023 she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.