Eliza Kitis holds an MA in Linguistics, University of Essex, and a  Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Warwick. She is Professor of Linguistics at the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She studied initially in Greece, where she got a BA in English Language and Literature (recipient of state studentship IKY on merit during all years of her studies), and during her residence in UK she obtained her other two degrees. Her 1982 University of Warwick Ph.D. thesis (under David Holdcroft's supervision) Problems connected with the notion of Implicature was supported by a three-year major state studentship awarded on merit by the Department of Education and Science, UK. The thesis is a major critique of Grice's Program of Logic and Conversation. The notion of conversational implicature was redefined in terms of intentionality and the principle of relevance, which was identified as dominant in this type of implicature and in communication. Many instances of Grice's conversational implicature were found to be just contextual assumptions ordinarily surrounding speech-events, often explainable in terms of knowledge frames and scripts. It was argued that the notions of 'frame' and 'script' played a paramount role in communication and that implicature  had to be 'liberated' from such contextual assumptions. Conventional implicature was also discussed and criticized. The thesis can claim a pioneering role (very early in the day), not only in positing the maxim of relevance as the major determinant of implicature, but also in showing how insights from various trends emerging at the time in other disciplines can be brought to bear on the analysis of implicature and on pragmatics in general. The thesis uses concepts and tools from the burgeoning fields at the time of cognitive science (e.g., frames, scripts, knowledge representation theories) and conversation analysis (ethnomethodology).

Eliza’s teaching and research have reflected her special interests in semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis as well as CDA. At the Department of English, Aristotle University she introduced core courses such as intros in linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. She has also offered courses on connectives and subordinators of English and Modern Greek, discourse markers and particles, at graduate level at other Departments. Her research has been published in various journals and as book chapters. She is also the author of a textbook Semantics, Meaning in Language. She served as country research team leader of COST Action IS0703 (genres). She sits on the editorial boards of journals, while she is on the international board of reviewers for various other journals and conferences, (e.g., Journal of Pragmatics, Erkenntniss, ICCLA, Pragmatics and Society, or for EU Programs), as well as on promotion review committees internationally. She has taught at the graduate programme of the Dept of English in Kent State University, Ohio. Additionally, she spent quite a few semesters and academic years visiting as a scholar various Universities, mainly in the UK (Leeds, Cambridge, London).

Currently, she divides her time between Thessaloniki and London.