María López Medel has been a freelance translator and sworn interpreter for 24 years, 9 of them for European institutions, and has translated 25 books. She was previously editor-in-chief of a photography magazine (1993–2008).

She holds a degree in Translation and Interpreting (1998) and a PhD in Translation Studies (2021), with a thesis on non-sexist translation in the European Union, as well as an international Master’s degree in Gender Studies from Umeå University (Sweden), with a dissertation on the representation of women in the manosphere. She is accredited as a full university lecturer by ANECA and has been recognised one six-year CNEAI research period (2018–2023).

Since 2017, she has been teaching modue in general translation EN-ES and ES-EN on the undergraduate programme in Translation and Interpreting, and in comparative legal languages on the Master’s degree programme in Institutional Translation. She is also a study-abroad academic adviser and has undertaken teaching placements in Ireland, Poland, France, Malta, Romania, Canada and Germany, and a research stay in Lithuania.

Her academic publications focus on gender, language and translation, and she has participated in various research projects on gender and translation, presenting the results at numerous international conferences. She is also involved in projects on accessible translation and audio description.

In addition, she co-directs the Literature and Translation cultural programme of the University of Alicante’s Cultural Service, which organises cultural activities such as exhibitions, conferences and the translation phase of the interdisciplinary ESCRIDAR project, which brings together the visual arts, poetry and translation.