Maria-Luz Celaya is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Applied Linguistics in the Modern Languages and Literatures and English Studies Department at the University of Barcelona. Her research encompasses several key areas, including cross-linguistic influence, interlanguage pragmatics, the integration of the first language (L1) within foreign language pedagogy, and the acquisition of second languages by senior learners. She has been a full member of the GRAL research team since its inception thirty years ago. Additionally, she has served as the coordinator for both the PhD programme and the Master's programme in "Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition in Multilingual Contexts" at the University of Barcelona. Moreover, she is the founder and co-chair of the International Association for Teaching Pragmatics (ITAP). She has presented her papers at both national and international conferences. She has (co-) authored three books and several book chapters and articles published in key journals in the field of SLA, and has supervised more than forty MA theses and nine Ph.D. dissertations.