Maria Georgieva is Associate Professor and the current Head of the Department of English and American Studies at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. She is a member and former President of the Bulgarian Society for English Studies affiliated to ESSE (European Society for English Studies). She is also a member of the Bulgarian Scientists’ Union. She teaches courses on pragmatics, sociolinguistics, communication strategies and second language acquisition to BA and MA students. Her research interests and publications include sociolinguistics, intercultural pragmatics, English as an international language, applied linguistics and second language acquisition. Representative recent publications on this area have appeared in the journals Intercultural Pragmatics (2009) and BAS (British and American Studies) (2009), and in the volumes Contending with Globalization in World Englishes (2010), Language in use: the case of youth entertainment magazines (2010) and Globalization in English Studies (2010).