Biography
My field of expertise is in Landscape Archaeology and Islamic History with focus on the Western Mediterranean. I developed my academic career primarily in Spain and Italy, having the opportunity to benefit from interdisciplinary and fruitful research environments, and establishing strong links with the scientific community. This lasting relationship, resulted in the development of a strong collaborative network conformed by experts in a variety of fields such as History and Archaeology, Environmental Sciences, Agronomy, Botany, Hidrology, Hidrogeology, Geography, History of Construction, Spatial Planning, Topography and Photogrammetry, Computer Systems and Languages and Graphic Computing. This research network facilitated collaboration and information exchange, nurturing my research interests and widening theoretical and methodological approaches in the study of historical landscapes analysis, medieval construction techniques in relation to spatial organization, and the application of TIC to Archaeology.
Since 2006, funding stability allowed me to consolidate a solid research group based at the University of Granada and integrated by scholars, PhD students, MA students and technicians. The main result of this effort was the foundation of MEMOLab that aims for collaboration between the private and academic sectors combining traditional archaeological approaches and newly developed scientific techniques. The MEMOLab currently incorporates 20 young researchers developing their lab-based skills not only in Archaeology, but also Ecology, Pedology, Hydrogeology or Environmental Sciences. We provide mentorship for students interested in archaeological fieldwork, laboratory work and stratigraphic analysis, integrated approaches and transdisciplinarity, socioecosystems and sustainability, traditional ecological knowledge and governance and participatory approaches, including Community Archaeology. Actually, an important effort is made to assure research social impact, something we consider essential in scientific research. For that reason, we designed a strategy of participation, social impact, community building, sustainability improvement and dialogue of knowledge as part of our research.