Dr Maria ECONOMIDOU-KOGETSIDIS is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Nicosia and the Coordinator of the MA TESOL Programme of the Department of Languages and Literature. She holds a PhD in Cross-cultural Pragmatics (Applied Linguistics) from the University of Nottingham, an MA in TESOL and Applied Linguistics and a BA in Humanities from the University of Luton (Bedfordshire). She has been working at the University of Nicosia since 2002 and prior to this she worked as an ESL lecturer in Dunstable College in the UK and as an EFL instructor at Intercollege in Limassol. Her research areas are interlanguage and intercultural pragmatics, cross-cultural communication, sociopragmatics, pragmalinguistics, email requests and politeness. Her publications have appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, ELT Journal, Journal of Politeness Research and Multilingua. She is a co-editor of the John Benjamins edited volume 'Interlanguage Request Modification' published in 2012. Her current research focuses on the pragmatic performance and development of Greek and Greek Cypriot learners of English, on interlanguage request modification, e-requests and e-politeness, and on the methodological comparison of request data. She is a reviewer for the Journal of Pragmatics, the Journal of Intercultural Pragmatics, TESOL Quarterly, the British Journal of Educational Research and the Australian Journal of Linguistics.She is also an Editorial Board Member of the Intercultural Communication Education Journal.