Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez

Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez serves as a Lecturer in Spanish and Head of Spanish at The Open University, where she also leads the Linguistics in Language Learning and Teaching special interest group. She acts as Co-Lead of the Diasporic Identities research strand, leveraging her expertise in Spanish linguistics and diaspora studies to examine language teaching dynamics in non-immersion contexts.

Her research centers on bridging theoretical linguistics with practical classroom applications, particularly investigating how language teachers' personal and professional biographies shape their perceptions of linguistic variation and grammar instruction. Key interests include Teaching and Learning Spanish as a Foreign Language, Historiography of Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, and Sociolinguistics, with emphasis on diaspora communities' role in exporting linguistic norms through pedagogy.

Mara has secured significant research funding including The E-Portfolio Toolkit project (Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching) and The Pragmatic Change in Spanish (Spanish Council of Science and Technology), alongside contributions to the CORDE diachronic corpus for the Spanish Royal Academy.

She actively participates in academic communities as a member of the Grama4 research group focused on grammar teaching foundations for non-native Spanish speakers, and leads initiatives connecting theoretical linguistics with language pedagogy through her special interest group.