Leslie Anne Merced, Ph.D., received her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004. She is a specialist in the Spanish 19th and 20th centuries. Her research areas include gender studies in modern and contemporary peninsular literature, with an emphasis in the cultural and historical period known as fin de siglo or the turn of the 19th century into the 20th.

Merced also researches and publishes with a transnational focus as in her attested published work on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, on diverse topics in Spanish literature such as Generation of 1898 authors and the canon, as well as in the relationship between medicine and gender. Her multiple conference presentations demonstrate this trend with papers that deal thematically with Lola Rodriguez de Tio and Concha Espina, as well as Caribbean-Transatlantic encounters between Spanish and Latin American women.

Her upcoming article deals with the relationship of the translator to the author of the original medical text during the 19th century in Spain. In this article, she dwells into her second area of expertise, German literature and culture of the 19th century, as well as the issues of the translator's visibility.