In 2021 ICREA Research Professor, Margarita Díaz-Andreu received the prestigious Ramón Menéndez Pidal National Award for the “quality, creativity and international impact of her research career in the field of archaeology, highlighting her contributions to gender studies and pioneering work in the field of archaeoacoustics”. Since her arrival in Barcelona in 2012 she has published more than twelve books/dossiers and many peer-reviewed articles. She is leading four projects: the ERC Artsoundscapes; the JPI-JHEP Deep Cities, the R+D+i ArqueólogAs and the Palarq Baja California project. In 2021 they sustained a total of twelve positions, most of them for PhD and post-doctoral researchers. Six students have completed their PhDs in Barcelona, most of them now in research or professional careers. As a researcher Margarita Díaz-Andreu has contributed to fostering knowledge by organising and participating in conferences and engaging in outreach

Research interests

The three main research areas in which Díaz-Andreu has been active and has led research groups in the last few years are still in place. Her work in rock art and archaeoacoustics is highly innovative and she leads an ERC interdisciplinary group of archaeologists, acoustic engineers, ethnomusicologists and psychologists. For this project, although fieldwork elsewhere in the world was not possible, she managed to undertake further tests in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic areas. She also published on rock art and dance scenes and prehistoric sounds. In the history of archaeology the highlight has been the publication of two books about interdisciplinarity and archaeology (Oxbow, UB) and the running of the ArqueólogAs project, with the publication of many biographies of women pioneers on the project’s webpage. Her work in the international DeepCities project has resulted in a publication about heritage values in urban transformation. She is leading investigator in all her three research groups of academics and students (ArqueólogAs, Artsoundscapes and GAPP/Deep Cities).