Executive Committee

Professor of Ethnography and Prehistory of Africa at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (1994-2012), since 2013 she is a member of the Board of ISMEO, International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, where she is continuing her scientific activities. At the universities of Rome and Naples, as a member of the Doctoral Schools in Archaeology and African Studies, she provided the training and specialized supervision of many Italian and African researchers in African prehistory. In the context of her studies, some major themes were developed. The theme of the first Saharan societies engaged in a food production economy, has been dealt with in the framework of archaeological projects in Fezzan; in the Egyptian Western Desert.

Holder of a doctorate (Geology and Prehistory) from the University of Provence, now retired from the University of Dakar. His publications in Senegal focus on the stratigraphic framework of Palaeolithic tools in the east of the country, on the shell middens of the Saloum delta and on the heritage aspects of the island of Gorée. Curator of the Historical Museum of Gorée (1989 to 2005), and of the Museum of African Art in Dakar (2005 to 2008), Camara is an associate professor at Senghor University in Alexandria (since 1995), and pursues archaeological research in the Falémé valley with the team of Professor Eric Huysecom from the University of Geneva.

Robrahn González is a historian, anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She is the head scientist of the Documento Institute/Brazil, and a collaborating researcher at the ITM Institute and the CGEO/University of Coimbra, Portugal. She has led more than 500 projects in cultural heritage management, especially in disruptive processes involving indigenous, traditional, and urban communities. She focuses on integrating the social sciences in a transdisciplinary format combining the intensive use of technology, as a current trend to meet global challenges in sustainable models.

Reader in Prehistory at Queen’s University Belfast, Brandherm originally took his PhD from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and subsequently worked as an assistant heritage manager with the State Heritage Service of the Rhineland-Palatinate, before holding teaching and research positions with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He has also served as Executive Editor for Mediterranean Prehistory Online, as Editor for the Journal of Irish Archaeology and as an elected officer with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bronzezeit (Chair) and the Bronze Age Studies Group (Vice-President). His research interests focus on the Bronze and Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean, and range from social archaeology and archaeological theory to the scientific analysis of archaeomaterials.

Researcher at the CNRS, in prehistory. She works on the anthropization of bones, manufacturing techniques and bone portable art (Upper Pleistocene, Early Holocene). Through the technological and experimental approach, she has highlighted different postglacial technical traditions, in the manufacture and ornamentation of implements made from hard materials of animal origin (bone, antler, tooth). Working mainly on archaeological series in Northern European countries where she has conducted several research programs, she is working to establish the links between bone production, territorial and cultural markers, and symbolisms. She also teaches at the University Paris Nanterre.

Researcher at the University of Ferrara, associate researcher of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle of Paris, and president of the Biological Anthropology UISPP commission. She is a specialist in Paleoanthropology. Her main research area concerns the first peopling of Europe until the early Neanderthal evolution. Parallelly, since more than 10 years she is part of the research team of several Italian prehistoric sites such as Pirro Nord, Isernia la Pineta and Ciota Ciara cave. In terms of teaching and training, she is a lecturer in Human Paleontology for the International Master in Quaternary and Prehistory and manager of the 3D platform of the Humanities department in UNIFE for student training in virtual anthropology.

Professor, Università di Ferrara. Director of the International Master and doctorate in Quaternary and Prehistory. Coordinator of several (local unit/project coordinator) international founded projects: FP7, EM, Galielo, Coperlink, CNR-CNRST, IP-Socrates-Erasmus. Since 2011 expert at the EC (FP7 and H2020). Deputy Director of the Doctorate in “Human Science”, University of Ferrara.Director of 49 Master and 12 PhD theses about Prehistory. Director of the excavations of Pirro Nord and Ciota Ciara. Main areas of research: technology and economic behaviour during the Middle and Lower Palaeolithic in Italy; the first peopling of Europe; the Middle Palaeolithic cultures of the Sahara, lithic technology and experimentation. Author of more than 150 international scientific publications.

Professor at Université Paris 1 and a Neolithic specialist, Bostyn more specifically works on lithic technical systems from the end of the 6th millennium to the 4th millennium BC in northern France. Through a global technological approach, she addresses issues of craft specialisation and exchange networks in Early and Middle Neolithic societies. Questions of the origin of raw materials and procurement systems are central to her research and are integrated into wider European research agendas developed within the UISPP commission ‘Flint Mining in European Prehistory and Protohistory’. She has conducted numerous archaeological excavations at Neolithic settlements and at the flint mine of Jablines (France) and has autored and edited several monographs and international conference proceedings.

Conard earned bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology and Chemistry at the University of Rochester in 1983. In 1986 he was awarded an interdisciplinary Master’s degree in Physics, Geology and Anthropology in Rochester. Conard earned Master’s and doctoral degrees in Anthropology at Yale University in 1988 and 1990, where he wrote his PhD thesis on the archaeology of Neanderthals. Conard worked as an assistant professor in Anthropology at the University of Connecticut from 1991-1993. From 1993-1995 he worked as a Humboldt research fellow at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz/Neuwied. In 1995 he was appointed Chair of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen.

Senior Archaeologist and Director of the Museo Sannitico and the Museo Palazzo Pistilli in Campobasso (Molise, Italy). Delfino’s research interests focus on European later prehistory, hillforts, archaeometallurgy, museum studies, heritage education and public archaeology. After taking his PhD from the Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro in 2011, he directed several excavations in Portugal, mainly of Late Bronze Age hillforts, and has subsequently worked in a number of senior roles for the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Professor of Prehistory at the University of Ferrara. Her main research interest focuses on the last prehistoric foragers’ groups of Northern Italy, investigated through material culture, especially lithic technology, settlement strategies and funerary rituals. Fontana directs fieldworks in some key Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites of northeastern Italy (Riparo Tagliente, Verona; Mondeval de Sora, Malga Staulanza and Prà Comun in the Belluno Dolomites) and coordinates research projects focused on prehistoric hunter-gatherers’ adaptation to mountain environments with special emphasis on the southern Alps and northern Apennines.

Fullola i Pericot is Emeritus Professor of Prehistory at the University of Barcelona, where he has taught since 1975. Most of his work is concerned with the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Iberia, where he has directed fieldwork at key sites such as the Filador rock shelter, the Cova del Parco cave site and Montlleó open-air site. Apart from leading multiple research projects on the Palaeolithic and Epipaleolithic of Spain and supervising 23 PhD theses, he has participated in international projects in Portugal, France and Mexico. He became a member of the UISPP commission “Upper Palaeolithic” in 1983, serving as commission vice-president from 2012 and taking over as commission president at the 2023 UISPP World Congress held in Timișoara.

Researcher at the Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria (IIIPC). Garate earned his PhD in Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Cantabria and completed postdoctoral studies in France (CREAP – TRACES, Université de Toulouse-Jean Jaurès). After that, he was curator at the Arkeologia Museoa in Bilbao for nine years and in 2018 was awarded a fellowship by the “Ramon y Cajal” programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. Since them, he has been working as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cantabria. He is member of 42 research projects (17 as PI) and he has 215 publications (9 scientific monographs, 132 scientific articles, 12 articles of dissemination and 47 report summaries). His research is focused on Palaeolithic cave art across Europe.

Hadjouis is a renowned archaeologist who specializes in Palaeoanthropology, Palaeopathology and Palaeontology. He graduated from the universities of Paris VI (Muséum National d’Histoire naturelle et Université Paris VI) and Perpignan and subsequently joined the Laboratoire départemental d’Archéologie du Val-de-Marne as an archaeozoologist and paleoanthropologist, before becoming research director at CNRPAH (Algeria). He has been conducting research in his main fields of study for about forty years, trained dozens of students from Europe, Africa and Asia as associate professor at various universities, and has written nearly 300 articles and books covering the aforementioned disciplines.

Research director at the CNRS, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Specialist of hominin behaviours, in particular technology and land-use patterns, from the earliest occupations in Europe to Neanderthal occupations. Moncel has directed several international research and field programmes, including the recent programmes focusing on the Acheulean and Homo heidelbergensis behavior in Europe between 700 and 500 ka. She has managed a Franco-British project on the Acheulean and has had the opportunity to excavate la Noira, the famous Abbeville sites (Carpentier, Leon and Moulin Quignon quarries) in France. In recent years she has also been working in Italy on the famous sites of the Ceprano basin. She is currently the director of excavations at the key site of Notarchirico in Italy.

Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar. Principal investigator of the Quaternary and Human Adaptations cluster of the Geosciences Centre at Coimbra University. Secretary-General of the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences. Main fields of research: origins of farming, rock art, heritage, landscape management (in Portugal, Africa, Latin America). Prizes and awards: European Commission, Brazilian Lawyers Bar, Portuguese Ministry of Culture, Gulbenkian Foundation, Foundation for Science and Technology and several private sponsors. Author of over 300 papers and 50 books. UNESCO chair holder “Humanities and Cultural Integrated Landscape Management”. Invited Professor at several European and Brazilian universities.

Having earned his MPhil and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge, Paz currently is Professor at the School of Archaeology at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His areas of specialization include archaeobotany, Pacific archaeology and Southeast Asian archaeology. Throughout his career, Paz has led numerous successful archaeology and heritage projects across the Philippines, including in Palawan, Agusan, Quezon and Batanes. He was the founding editor of Hukay: Journal of Southeast Asia and Pacific Archaeology, and has made significant contributions to heritage advocacy. Paz is a founding member of KAPI (the professional body of Philippine Archaeologists), and has served as President of the WG Solheim II Foundation for Philippine Archaeological Research since 2019.

Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), PhD in Sociology of Science (EHESS, France) and MA in Archaeology, former Fellow of the École française de Rome (2016–2019), President of the UISPP “History of Archaeology” commission. Plutniak conducts research in three different fields: 1) historical and sociological research on archaeological methods, organisations, and institutions (mainly in 20th-century Europe), 2) field archaeology in Island Southeast Asia (Borneo) and the Pacific (Papua New Guinea), 3) computational methods and theory in archaeology. He published several pieces of software related to fragmentation analysis and data visualisation in archaeology.

Professor at the Mikovinyi Sámuel Doctoral School of Earth Sciences of the University of Miskolc. President of the Foundation for the Szeleta Culture and Hungarian Society for Prehistoric Sciences. Since 2013 President of the Scientific Commission on Middle Palaeolithic Industries with Bifacial Tools, Backed Bifaces and Leaf Points in Western Eurasia of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP). Editor of the international journal Praehistoria. Main research areas: Prehistory, Archaeology, Old Stone Age, geoarchaeology, cognitive archaeology, research in ten countries in Western Eurasia, from France to Israel. Autor of over 100 papers and three books.

Schuster is a senior researcher with the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology (Institutul de Arheologie “Vasile Pârvan”) of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. He has made significant contributions to the field, particularly in the study of the Bronze Age in Romania. His work involves the use of innovative methods and technologies to further our understanding of ancient civilizations. Schuster assumed the presidency of the Scientific Commission “Mortuary Practices in Prehistory and Protohistory” at the 2023 UISPP World Congress in Timișoara.

Senior scientific Fellow of the Experimental and Traceological Laboratory of the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the RAS. She is the President of the Commission of Functional Studies of Prehistoric Artefacts of UISPP, and she holds the title of Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France). Her diverse research interests focus on the study of ancient tools and the reconstruction of economic patterns of Eurasia from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age, methodology of use-wear analysis of ancient tools, and prehistoric archeological cultures of Eastern and Southeastern Eurasia. Natalia is a scientific adviser of students and postgraduates from Russia and other countries. She is author of a book and has published over 200 papers.

Associate Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University. From 2008 to 2013, she was Archeological Rescue Excavation Team Manager at the Center of Prehistoric and Medieval Studies of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology. Sobkowiak-Tabaka is the President of the Commission of Final Palaeolithic of Northern Eurasia. Her research interests focus on Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic settlement, chronostartygraphy and environmental variables of settlement locations. She is an author of three books and has published over 50 papers.

Metallurgical engineer, archaeometallurgist and history teacher. Associate professor at the University of Miskolc (Hungary). Head of the Institute of Metallurgy. President of the UISPP commission for archaeometry. Secretary of the Special Committee of Materials Sciences and Metallurgy of the Regional Committee of Miskolc of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Vice-President of the Workgroup of Industrial Archaeology and Archaeometry of the Regional Committee of Veszprém of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Main fields of research: archeometallurgy of iron, archaeometry of the finds related to ancient and medieval metal technologies, history of metallurgy. EU-expert and proposal evaluator at the Research Fund for Coal and Steel.

Watteaux works in Landscape Archaeology and Historical Geography on the history of landscapes and of road networks in the longue durée, on medieval rural landscapes and on the historiography of geohistorical disciplines. After a obtaining a PhD from Université Paris 1, with a thesis on agrarian morphology in the southern Vendée (2002-2009), a post-doc in Portugal on medieval and modern agrarian planning in the Alentejo (2010-2012), she took up a post as lecturer in medieval history and archaeology at Université Rennes 2 in 2013. Since 2022 she has been coordinating the ANR-funded project PARCEDES, investigating field patterns and land use dynamics over time. She is member of the research team Tempora and of the UMR ArScAn (team “Archéologies environnementales”). She is also Vice-President of the Association Française d’ArchéoGéographie (AFAG).