Executive Committee

Professor at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences (since 2012). President of the International Commission of the Later Prehistory of Northeastern Africa (since 2019). Member of the International Academy of Prehistory and Protohistory (since 2023). He is conducting research on Late Pleistocene and Holocene foragers of the North European Lowlands. Within the framework of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition (Director of CPE since 2009) he is investigating Middle/Late Pleistocene and Holocene hunter-gatherers, and Early/Middle Holocene pastoralists of the Egyptian Western Desert, including ceremonial behaviour, climate change and anthropogenic impact on the environment (Gebel Ramlah/Nabta Playa region).

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 the National Institute of Archaeological and Heritage Sciences (INSAP) in Morocco, where he directs Master's projects and PhD theses. His research interests concern North Africa and mainly the technical systems of the Middle Stone Age and the emergence of the cultural behaviour of the first Homo sapiens. He undertakes excavations at several sites, including the Pigeons Caves in Taforalt and Bizmoune. He has published several articles and monographs. He is an associate researcher at the Laboratoire Méditerranéen Préhistoire Europe Afrique in Aix-en-Provence, a foreign member of ISMEO, a member of the international scientific committee of the Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology in Monaco, an associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute, Department of Archaeogenetics and an honorary member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at Newcastle University, Francesco is a landscape archaeologist working on long-term human-environment interactions. He is interested in human adaptation and impact on mountain environments, and he has been working in different mountain regions of Europe and the Mediterranean (Alps, Southern Italy, Turkey, etc.). His research focuses primarily on the origin and history of mobile pastoralism. He is a GIS expert and spatial analysis specialist, and he uses cutting-edge computational methods to investigate settlement patterns and the organisation of activity areas within archaeological sites.

Researcher at IPHES-CERCA, associate researcher of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle of Paris (UMR7194-HNHP), associated teacher at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona) and president of the UISPP's Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age commission. Her research focuses on the study of Middle Paleolithic (MP) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) lithic tool production to reconstruct technical behaviors and social dynamics of Neanderthals (Europe) and Homo sapiens (North Africa) populations, being principal investigator (PI) of different research projects about these topics. Author of more than 145 international scientific publications and director of eight PhD and 13 Masters theses on Prehistory.

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 Anthropology at the University of West Alabama, Dumas received her MA and PhD from the University of Alabama, where she studied the archaeology of salt production and trade. She is co-editor, with Paul Eubanks, of Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean (2021). Her research interests include salt in ancient society and dynamics of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples in the southeastern U.S., particularly between sixteenth-century Spaniards and late period chiefly polities. She is actively involved in numerous US societies for archaeology and historic preservation. She became president of the UISPP Preventive Archaeology Commission in 2023.

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.

After obtaining a doctorate from the University of Provence (Aix-en-Provence) and 12 years as a lecturer at the University of Burgundy (Dijon), Lemercier has been – since 2016 – Professor of Prehistory at the University Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3 and a researcher at the UMR 5140 'Archéologie des Sociétés Méditerranéennes' as well as at LabEx ARCHIMEDE. He is also responsible for the Master's degree in Archaeology and History of Ancient Worlds. His specialist expertise covers Bell Beakers and more generally the Neolithic and the transition to the Bronze Age in Europe and the Mediterranean. He is an appointed member of the Conseil National de la Recherche Archéologique (France) and, since 2023, Vice-President of the Société Préhistorique Française. He has authored or edited seven books and more than a hundred scholarly articles.

Lucarini is a Researcher at the CNR-ISPC and teaches courses of Prehistory and Protohistory at the University of Naples L’Orientale. He earned his PhD in African Studies from L'Orientale, followed by research positions at Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Cambridge. His research primarily explores human adaptations to the environment and the emergence of food production in North Africa. His focus includes the study of material culture, particularly lithic manufacturing and function, to understand socio-economic changes and human-environment interactions. Additionally, he actively engages in the study and preservation of rock art. Lucarini has conducted extensive field research in Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. He serves as the Co-Director of the Farafra Oasis Prehistoric Project in Egypt, the Northern Tunisia Archaeological Project, and the Oued Beht Archaeological Project in Morocco.

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.

Professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, Director of the Anthropological and Sociological Initiatives of the Ateneo (ASIA) and head of the TRACES Laboratory. Pawlik studied Prehistoric Archaeology at the Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Germany. He holds the Rev Frank X. Lynch SJ Memorial Chair and is the Research Coordinator of the Ateneo School of Social Sciences. His research interests focus on the prehistory of Europe and Southeast Asia, the Archaeology of hunter/gatherer/fishers and the migration of early and modern hominins. He specializes in experimental traceology, prehistoric technology, and prehistoric human mobility and interaction in maritime environments.

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.

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.

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.

Associate professor of Microarchaeology at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna. Stahlschmidt received her doctorate form Tübingen University before moving on to post-doc positions at the University College Dublin and the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and taking on her current position in Vienna. Her research concentrates on the microarchaeological investigation of the sedimentary archaeological record with a particular focus on fire remains and Pleistocene contexts. She is president of the pyroarchaeology commission.

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.

Viallet is a Palaeolthic specialist who took his PhD from the University of Perpignan ‘Via Domitia’. His research aims to document the technical development of heavy-duty tools in the Palaeolithic, particularly in the Middle Pleistocene of the Mediterranean basin. To this end, he combines technological approaches with an analysis of the ergonomics of tools, based on a vast programme of experimentation. The results are particularly relevant to the debates on the settlement of Europe in the Early Palaeolithic and the notions of technical diffusion/convergence, as well as to a general understanding of the relationship between humanities and the lithic resources they used to interact with their environment.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In her professional career, she has focused on prehistoric flint mining, the use of flint in the Stone Age and Metal Ages, and the identification and use of siliceous rocks by prehistoric communities. Since 2017, Dr. Werra has been the Editor-in-Chief of the journal 'Archaeologia Polona'. She participated and conducted archaeological research at numerous archaeological sites, including those associated with flint mining.

Widianto is a research professor affiliated with Indonesia’s Research Center for Archaeometry, National Research and Innovation Agency, and the Regional Agency for Archaeological Research in Yogyakarta Province. His specialism are human palaeontology and prehistoric archaeology. Widianto has conducted significant research on Homo erectus fossils from Java and contributed extensively to the understanding of prehistoric human evolution in Indonesia. His work includes morphological analysis of fossils, geological contexts of early human settlements, and prehistoric cultural studies. He is internationally recognized for his scholarly publications and active field research in the Pleistocene era.