Kris Ramonda was born and raised in the greater Houston area of Texas, USA. After finishing high school in 1997, he worked for three years as a bartender before deciding to study at university, where he completed his undergraduate degree in Spanish and international studies at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas in 2004. 

​

In early 2005, he completed an English-teaching certificate program (CELTA) before moving abroad to teach university-level English communication classes in China and Mexico from 2005 to 2008. It was during this time he discovered he had a keen interest in language pedagogy and decided to make his career out of language teaching and research. With this aim in mind, he returned to Texas to pursue an MA in applied linguistics at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, which he completed in 2010 after two years of coursework.

​

Upon completing his master's degree, he secured a job as an English lecturer in a large, coordinated foreign-language program at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Beppu, Japan. It was also around this time that he began to conduct research in second language acquisition. In 2012 he began working at Kwansei Gakuin University, in Sanda, Japan, where he was acting coordinator and curriculum developer of lower-level reading courses in the English language program there. 

​

In 2015, he accepted a tenured position at Tokyo University of Science as an English lecturer. One year later, in 2016, he completed his PhD in applied English linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK, where he had been studying via distance since late 2012. His PhD thesis examined the role semantic transparency and picture type had on second language learners when learning newly met figurative expressions. 

​

Currently, he is an associate professor of applied linguistics  at Kansai University in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, in Osaka, Japan. 

​

Kris Ramonda's primary research interests include vocabulary acquisition, metaphor, and metonymy. He is also interested in working memory and extensive reading. 

​