Associate Professor Dr. Maria Kitanova was born in Sofia. She graduated in Bulgarian philology at Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski" in 1977. Since 1978 she has been a full-time doctoral student at the Institute of Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She currently works in the Section for Ethnolinguistics at the Institute. She was a lecturer at Sofia University "Kliment Ohrivski" and at the Moscow State University "M. V. Lomonosov ”. She deals with ethnolinguistics, cognitivism and linguoculturology.