Danuta Gabrys-Barker lectures in applied linguistics and second language acquisition at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. Her main areas of interest are multilingualism and affectivity in SLA. Professor Gabrys-Barker has published numerous articles and two books Aspects of Multilingual Storage, Processing and Retrieval (2005) and Reflectivity in Pre-service Teacher Education (2012). She is the chief editor (together with Eva Vetter) of the International Journal of Multilingualism.

Joanna Bielska is involved in language teacher education programmes at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland and lectures on theories of second language acquisition, research methods in applied linguistics and the methodology of foreign language teaching. She has had a long-standing interest in the psychology of the language learner with special focus on the role of individual differences in SLA. Her current work revolves around the theme of self-efficacy in language learning and teaching.