Dr. Larisa Nikitina is an associate professor at the Department of Asian and European Languages, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya. Much of her research focuses on psychological and emotional factors involved in learning an additional language. She is particularly interested in exploring mental images that learners of various languages hold about target language countries. This interest eventuated in authoring the book Stereotypes and language learning motivation: A study of L2 learners of Asian languages published by Routledge. Dr Nikitina’s articles appeared in top disciplinary journals, including Applied Linguistics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, System and Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Her other academic interests include quantitative methods in Applied Linguistics and natural language processing. She welcomes collaborations with researchers who share similar academic interests.