Lourdes Ortega is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her main area of research is in second language acquisition, particularly sociocognitive and educational dimensions in adult classroom settings. In her research, she applies insights from bilingualism and from usage-based linguistics to the investigation of second language development. She has also long-standing interests in second language writing and foreign language education and has published widely about systematic research synthesis and epistemological and ethical dimensions of second language acquisition research. She was co-recipient of the Pimsleur and the TESOL Research awards and has been a doctoral Mellon fellow, a postdoctoral Spencer/National Academy of Education fellow, and a senior research fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies. Her publications include the book Understanding Second Language Acquisition (1st edition with Hodder, 2009; 2nd revised edition with Routledge, 2014). She has served/serves as area editor for "Language Learning and Teaching" for the Wiley Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (2012), editor of Language Learning (2010-2015), and as editorial board member on several journals.