Dr. Mercedes de la Torre García has been a lecturer of Spanish language in the Department of Languages and Translation at Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) since 2007. Her connection with the University began in 1999, when she began her research work with a scholarship. She obtained her PhD degree in 2003 with her doctoral thesis Análisis de las variedades diatópicas en los manuales de español para extranjeros, on the diatopic variation in the manuals of Spanish for foreigners, directed by Professor Stefan Ruhstaller.
Despite her close relation to the research on teaching methodology of Spanish as a foreign language, her work has mainly focused on her passion: ichthyonymy, the discipline that studies the names of fish species. In 1997, she presented her dissertation about the names of fish species in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz), which the local government published in 2004 with the title Ictionimia portuense. She has taken part as a lexicologist and dialectologist in the R&D projects led by the biologist Alberto Manuel Arias: “Nombres vernáculos e identificación de especies pesqueras de las costas de Cádiz y Huelva” and “Nombres vernáculos e identificación de especies pesqueras de las costas de Málaga, Granada y Almería”, whose most important outcome is ICTIOTERM, the biggest database of vernacular names of marine species from the Andalusian coasts. With the collaboration of Alberto Manuel Arias, she has also published the book La ictionimia andaluza en el siglo XVIII: el caso de Cádiz y Pehr Löfling (1753), on the Andalusian fish species from the 18th century, and recently in 2020 Ictionimia andaluza. Nombres vernáculos de especies pesqueras del Mar de Andalucía, on the vernacular names of fish species in the Andalusian coasts. In this field, she has also contributed with numerous articles and her involvement in several seminars, colloquiums and national and international congresses.
Contact e-mail: mtorgar@upo.es