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Mona Abaza
She received her BA in Political Science from The American University in Cairo (1982), her MA in Sociology from the University of Durham (1986), and her PhD from the University of Bielefeld (1990). She is the Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology at The American University in Cairo. Notable among her publications are Twentieth Century Egyptian Art: The Private Collection of Sherwet Shafei (2011) and The Cotton Plantation Remembered: An Egyptian Family Story (2013).
Giuseppe Barbera
Doctor of Agricultural Science from the Faculty of Agriculture – University of Palermo (1973), he specialised in Irrigation Agronomy at the University of Bologna (1976-1977). He has been Professor of Arboriculture at the University of Palermo since 1995. He was National Scientific Coordinator of the PRIN project “I paesaggi dell’agricoltura tradizionale in Italia: definizione di un modello interpretativo multidisciplinare e multiscala finalizzato alla pianificazione e alla gestione”. He is a member, among others, of the Società Orticola Italiana, the Gruppo di Ricerca Mediterraneo sul Mandorlo (GREMPA) and the International Society of Horticultural Science.
Xavier Barral
Graduate in Art History and Archaeology from the universities of Barcelona and Paris, he received his PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris, where he was Associate Professor of Medieval Art History until 1978 when he was appointed Chair of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Rennes. He has been Director of the French Historical Mission in Germany and of the National Art Museum of Catalonia. He has been a member of the IEC since 1992.
Rachid Bellil
Born in the Great Kabylie (Algeria), he is a sociologist, researcher and writer. He has contributed several reports to the Entreprise Nationale de Télévision (ENTV) on the oases of Gourara and of the South (Sahara). He is a researcher at the Centre national de recherches préhistoriques, anthropologiques et historiques, Algiers (Algeria).
Francisco Beltrán
Doctor of Philosophy and Arts (History section), he is the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Saragossa. He has focused his research on Latin and paleohispanic epigraphy and on ancient Hispania, with special attention to the problems of cultural contact, irrigation in the Roman world and the epigraphic habit. He is Editor-in-Chief and founder of the journal Revista sobre Lenguas y Culturas de la Hispania Antigua, of the Institución Fernando el Católico, and Director of the collection “Ciudades Romanas de Hispania” of L’Erma di Bretschneider (Rome).
Xavier Casanovas
He is president of RehabiMed, where he led the Montada project (2009-2012). He is Professor of Rehabilitation of Buildings at the Barcelona School of Building Construction (EPSEB), Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He promotes training activities and actions concerning rehabilitation, energy, waste and other environmental aspects of the existing buildings. He was Head of Rehabilitation and the Environment at the Barcelona Association of Quantity Surveyors, Technical Architects and Construction Engineers, where he developed the “Test Energia”.
Jesús Contreras
Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona and Director of the Observatori de l’Alimentació (ODELA) at the Parc Científic de Barcelona. His main lines of research are economic anthropology and consumption anthropology, mainly food consumption. He has undertaken fieldwork in different areas of the Spanish state and the Peruvian Andes. He has published books such as Productes de la terra (2003), Alimentación y Cultura. Perspectivas antropológicas (2005) and Alimentaçao, sociedade e cultura (2011).
Pietro Corrao
Graduate in Philosophy from the University of Palermo (1976), he holds a degree in Archival Science, Palaeography and Diplomatics from the Palermo Archive (1978). He is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Palermo and author of numerous essays on medieval Sicily and the Crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages, including Governare un regno. Potere, società e istituzioni in Sicilia fra Trecento e Quattrocento (1991) and La Corona d’Aragona nel Mediterraneo orientale del Quattrocento (2009). Since 2009 he has formed part of the Board of Directors of the Società Italiana degli Storici Medievisti (SISMED).
Andreu Domingo
Doctor of Sociology, Professor at the Department of Geography, Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Demographic Studies. He specialises in the study of population and has undertaken research in the fields of family and marriage. Lately, he has focused his research on international migrations. He has written articles in journals and works such as the essays Descenso literario a los infiernos demográficos: distopía y población (2008) and El llegat del doctor Deulofeu (Marià Vayreda Award 2004).
Hermenegildo Fernandes
Associate Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Lisbon, where he has lectured since 1987 and has held the position of Associate Director since 2009. He has devoted his research to medieval history, the history of Al-Andalus and the history of medieval Islam. He is Visiting Professor at the University Mohamed V al-Agdal Rabat. He has contributed to the História de Portugal, edited by John Medina (volume 3), and the Nova História da Expansão Portuguesa, edited by António Henrique Rodrigo de Oliveira (volume 3). He is a member of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Estudos Medievais and the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, and researcher at the Centro de História da FLUL.
Llorenç Ferrer Alòs
Chair of the Department of Contemporary History at the Faculty of Geography and History, University of Barcelona. His lines of research are history of the family, agricultural history, history of labour, protoindustrialisation, and taxation. He has developed different projects within the “Labour, Institutions and Gender” group. He is the author, among others, of Sociologia de la industrialització. De la seda al cotó a la Catalunya Central (segles xviii-xix) (2011) and Feines i eines de pagès (2013).
Senén Florensa
Diplomat and ambassador, he is the Executive President of the European Institute of the Mediterranean (2013-) and president of its Delegate Committee since 2005. He was Advisor at the Cabinet of the President of the Spanish Government (1979-1982), First Secretary of the Embassy of Spain to UNESCO (1986), General Secretary of the Departments of Trade, Consumption and Tourism (1986-1989) and Territorial Policy and Public Works (1989-1992) at the Government of Catalonia, General Consul in Berlin (1992-1996), General Director of the Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Árabe, Mediterráneo y Países en Desarrollo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (1996-2000), Spanish Ambassador to Tunisia (2000-2004) and Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Catalonia (2011-2012).
Antoni Font
He studied at the Barcelona School of Building Construction – EPSEB (1968) and received his PhD in 1977. He is the Chair of the Urban Planning Department and at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, School of Architecture. He is one of the founding members of the Department of Urban Planning, together with the architect Manuel de Solà-Morales i Rubió. He is the author of many publications, including Instrumentos de proyectación urbana (1984), and curator of L’explosió de la ciutat: transformacions territorials en les regions urbanes de l’Europa Meridional (COAC, 2007).
Laura Fregolent
Doctor of Science and Methods for European City and Territory, she is Associate Professor at the Department of Design and Planning in Complex Environments at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV). Her lines of research are the interactions between planning instruments and principles of sustainable development and processes of urban expansion. Since 2007, she has been the Editor-in-Chief, together with Michelangelo Savino, of the journal Archivio di Studi Urbani e Regionali, published by Franco Angeli.
Luciano Gallinari
Doctor of Medieval History from the University of Cagliari, he is a researcher at the Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea of the CNR in Cagliari, where he directs the project “Mediterraneo: sistemi geopolitici ed identità culturali”. He is also coordinator at the CNR/CONICET of the scientific project “Italia-Argentina: ovverosia il Mediterraneo in Sudamerica. Storia, arte e cultura tra xvi e xxi secolo”, and Editor-in-Chief of Rime Rivista di Storia dell’Istituto dell’Europa Mediterranea. In 2009 he chaired the 12th Annual Mediterranean Studies Congress, organised by the Mediterranean Studies Institute at the University of Cagliari and the Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea.
Joan Ganau
Doctor of Geography from the University of Barcelona (1993), he is Professor at the Department of Geography and Sociology, University of Lleida. He has directed the Repsol Chair of Competitiveness and Regional Development since 2011, and has been Deputy Director of the UNESCO Chair “Intermediate Cities and Development” since 2008. He is the author of numerous publications and coordinated Vivienda y sociedad: nuevas demandas, nuevos instrumentos (2008), with Josep M. Llop, and Xarxes de ciutats a Catalunya (2009), with Pilar Riera.
Salvador Giner
Doctor of Sociology from Chicago University (USA) and Emeritus Professor of Sociology from the University of Barcelona, where he was Director of the Department of Sociology (1987-1991). He has lectured in different European and American universities, and was the Chair and Director of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Brunel West London. He has been distinguished with the “Creu de Sant Jordi” of the Government of Catalonia (1995) and the National Prize of Sociology and Political Science at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (2006). He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Valencia (Venezuela, 2005), the University of Lleida (2013) and the UNED (2016). He was President of the IEC from 2005 to 2013.
Joan Gómez
Doctor of Classical Philology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona – UAB (1986). In 1988 he became Associate Professor in the Department of Latin Philology at the University of Barcelona and, later, he moved to the UAB, where he has been the chair since 2002. He has been the President of the Institut d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC) since 2013, in which he had formed part of the Board of Directors since 2002. He has participated as Senior Fellow in over 20 national and international projects and he is the author of an extensive bibliography. In 2000 he received from the Government of Catalonia the Distinction for the Promotion of University Research, in its first call.
Josep Guitart
Doctor of Philosophy and Arts, specialised in Ancient History, from the University of Barcelona, and Chair Emeritus of Archaeology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He was Deputy General Director of Museums, Visual Arts and Archaeology at the Department of Culture of the Government of Catalonia (1980-1984) and promoter and Director of the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (2002-2006). He worked in the excavations and studies on the Roman cities of Baetulo (Badalona) and Iesso (Guissona) and on the editing of sheet K/S-31 of the Tabula Imperii Romani, corresponding to Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. He is IEC Delegate and Vice President in the Union Académique Internationale and member of the IEC since 1990.
Francesco Indovina
Town planner, politician and journalist. He graduated in Law at the University of Palermo (1956); studied at the Istituto per Imprenditori e Dirigenti di Azienda (ISIDA), and participated in a research project led by Anna Anfossi on Ragusa and the consequences of the discovery of oil. In 1958 he moved to Milan, where he worked at the Centro Studi e Ricerche sulla Struttura Economica Italiana of the Istituto Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, directed by Silvio Leonardi. From 1971 until he retired in 2003, he was Professor of Town Planning at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. In 2010, the University of Lleida gave him the Joan Vilagrasa Award for Urban Studies. He is the author of numerous publications, including Dalla città diffusa all’arcipelago urbano (2009).
Paulino Iradiel
Doctor from the Università degli Studi di Bologna, he is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Valencia. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica Francesco Datini in Prato. He has published, among other works, Evolución de la industria textil castellana en los siglos xiii-xvi. Factores de desarrollo, organización y costes de la producción manufacturera en Cuenca (1974) and Oficios artesanales y comercio en Castellón de la Plana (1300-1550) (1995).
Josep Maria Macias
Doctor of Ancient History from the University of Barcelona, he is a researcher at the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC). His lines of research are Tarraco, late antiquity and the early medieval period: urbanism and funerary topography; ceramology and ethnography; territory and villas, and baths and Roman hydraulics. From 2014 to 2016 he formed part of the interinstitutional group on classical archaeology MIRMED-GIAC, made up by researchers from the ICAC, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Rovira i Virgili University.
Marisol Madrid
Doctor of Geography and History from the University of Barcelona (2005), where she is also Professor at the Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology. Since 2002 she is Senior Research Fellow she is Senior Research Fellow at the University and is accredited by the Agència de Qualitat Universitària (AQU) of the Government of Catalonia as Assistant Lecturer (2011) and as Associate Professor (2013). She is a member of the Classical, Protohistoric and Egyptian Archaeology Research Group (GRACPE) at this university.
Oriol Nel·lo
Graduate in Geography and History, in the speciality of Geography, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he holds a Master of Arts in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is Professor at the Department of Geography of the UAB. He was Deputy at the Parliament of Catalonia (1999-2003) and Secretary of Territorial Planning at the Department of Territorial Policy and Public Works of the Government of Catalonia (2003-2011). He is the author of diverse books and articles on the urbanisation process, politics and territory and territorial conflicts, including Ciutat de ciutats. Reflexions sobre el procés d’urbanització a Catalunya (2001) and Francesco Indovina. Del análisis del territorio al gobierno de la ciudad (2012). He has been a member of the IEC since 2009.
Almudena Orejas
Scientific Researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Social Processes, Institute of History, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where she belongs to the “Social Structure and Territory. Landscape Archaeology (EST-AP)” group. Among other publications, she co-edited Landmarks. Profiling Europe’s Landscapes (2008), with Christoph Bartels, María Ruiz del Árbol and Heleen van Londen, and From present to past through landscape (2009), with David Mattingly and Monique Clavel-Lévêque.
Joseph Patrich
He received his PhD in 1989 with the thesis The Monastic Institutions of Saint Sabas – An Archaeological Historical Research at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is currently Professor of Archaeology. He has been a member of the Israel Exploration Society Council since 1999 and President of the Committee for Preservation of the Israel Council for Archaeology since 2003. Notable among his publications is The Judean Desert Monasticism in the Byzantine Period – The Institutions of Sabas and his Disciples, book awarded with the Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Prize (1996).
Christophe Picard
Professor of Medieval History at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He specialises in medieval Islam and his lines of research are political and social history in the medieval West and the history of the medieval Mediterranean maritime world. He is co-author, among other publications, of Espaces et réseaux en Méditerranée, VIe-XVIe siècle. Volum 1 : La configuration des réseaux (2007), with Dominique Valérian and Damien Coulon, and Les territoires de la Méditerranée. XIe-XVIe siècle (2013), with Annliese Nef, D. Coulon and D. Valérian.
Claudio Povolo
Professor of History of Political Institutions and History of Modern Medieval Law at the Department of Humanities at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of international journals such as Annales (Slovenian edition), Crime, Society and History (Geneva) and Annali di Studi Istriani e Mediterranei (Koper, Slovenia), and contributor to the journal Il Diritto della Regione.
Antoni Riera
Doctor of History from the University of Barcelona and the Chair Emeritus of the Department of Medieval History. He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Bologna, Tours, Florence, Genoa, Palermo and Paris IV. His research activity has focused on the economy and society of the Catalan Countries (La Corona de Aragón y el Reino de Mallorca en el primer cuarto del siglo xiv), the response of Catalan society to natural disasters (Els terratrèmols de l’any 1373 al Pirineu. Efectes a Espanya i França) and the social and cultural history of food (“Société féudale et alimentation”, in Histoire de l’alimentation). He has been a member of the IEC since 1996.
Eduard Riu-Barrera
He graduated in Medieval History from the University of Barcelona (1981). He led diverse excavations in Barcelona between 1983 and 1985 and began to study the early medieval city, which he addressed in volume xx of Catalunya romànica (1992). Since 1986 he has been responsible for archaeological and historical research applied to restorations at the Service of Architectural Heritage of the Government of Catalonia. Notable among the buildings in which he intervened, in the study and excavation, are the monasteries of Escaladei, Santa Maria de Vilabertran, Sant Pere de Casserres and Sant Cugat del Vallès.
Joan Roca
With a background as town planning geographer, he has lectured at the Institut de Ciències de l’Educació of the University of Barcelona, at the Institut Barri Besòs and the Programme of Independent Studies of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA). All his research and publications are focused on the urban, social, political and cultural trajectory of the contemporary metropolis. He has been the director of the Museum of the History of Barcelona since 2007.
Isabel Rodà
She is the Chair of the Department of Antiquity and Middle Ages Sciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She has specialised in Roman archaeology, focused on Barcino, Latin epigraphy and Roman sculpture, from the early contacts with the pre-Roman world to late antiquity. She is a member of the research team that studies the Latin inscriptions and sculptures of the Augusteum at Narona (Croatia). In 2004 she was appointed corresponding member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Berlin. She received the International Prize “Genio Protector de la Colonia Augusta Emerita” (2011), awarded by the Asociación de Amigos del Museo Nacional de Arte Romano (Mérida).
Flocel Sabaté
Chair of Medieval History at the University of Lleida, ICREA researcher, he received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Argentina) and Guest Professor at the universities Paris I, Poitiers, Yale, Cambridge, ENS Lyon, UNAM (Mexico), CONICET (Buenos Aires), Concepción and San Juan, among others. At the University of Lleida he leads the Consolidated Medieval Studies Research Group “Space, Power and Culture”, and has been Director of the Institut de Recerca en Identitats i Societat. His research focuses on society, power and territory in the Middle Ages. He has been a member of the IEC since 2015.
Joan Sanmartí
He received his PhD in Geography and History, in the speciality of Prehistory and Ancient History, from the University of Barcelona with the thesis La Laietània ibèrica. Estudi d’arqueologia i d’història (1986). He is chair of Archaeology and Director of the Classical, Protohistoric and Egyptian Archaeology Research Group. He has been a member of the IEC since 2007.
João Seixas
He received his PhD in Geography from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is Professor at the Department of Geography and Regional Planning at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Research Fellow at the Centro Interdisciplinar de Ciências Sociais (CICS-NOVA). He coordinates the team for the Administrative Reform of Lisbon. He is an expert in URBACT – Connecting Cities Building Process and Project Advisor in the Department of Urban Governance and Planning.
Christiane Stallaert
She holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Catholic University of Leuven (1993), she holds a Master in Romance Philology (French and Spanish) from the same university (1981) and is Professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Antwerp. Her lines of research are ethnicity, nationalism, migration, multiculturalism, frontiers and cultural transfers, the Mediterranean area, Latin America and Belgium (Brussels).
Farouk Tebbal
He was Algerian Minister of Town Planning (1992-1993) and he is international expert on urban issues. He received his PhD in Civil Engineering from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées in Paris and holds a Master’s Degree in Structural Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He was head of the Housing Subdivision of UN-Habitat and Coordinator of the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure, and has also been actively involved with the American Federation of Government Employees (AGFE) since its beginnings.
Xavier Tiana
Graduate in Political Science and International Relations from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he holds a Master’s Degree in European Studies and a Postgraduate Degree in Local Government. He was Head of the Bureau of European Cooperation at Barcelona Provincial Council and Director of the Cabinet of the Chair of the Board of the Public Audit Office of Catalonia. Since 2014, he has been responsible for International Relations at the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and, since 2015, General Secretary of MedCities – Mediterranean Cities Network.
Francisco Vidal
Professor of the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies and the Faculty of Humanities, University of Jaén, and member of the “Arab, Islamic and Christian Societies” research group. He is the author of publications on Islamic law, the history of Al-Andalus, the Nasrid dynasty, Sub-Saharan Black Africa, water in Arab-Islamic civilisation, women and Islam, the contemporary Arab and Islamic world, and Arab and Islamic Jaén.
Hermínia Vilar
A Doctor of History (1998), she is Professor at the Department of History at the University of Évora. She specialises in religious history; social history; construction of royal power and relations with the Church (13th-15th centuries), and urban elites and the formation of the urban identity. She has been researcher at the DEGRUPE-PTDC Project (2013-2015). She is a member of the Advisory Board of the journal Historia. Instituciones. Documentos, from the University of Seville, and Deputy President of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Estudos Medievais.
Asnu Bilban Yalçin
She received her PhD in Art History for the thesis The Great Palace of Constantinople: its historical development and institutions from the University of Istanbul (2000), in which she has been Professor of History of Byzantine art since 2009. She has led diverse projects and excavations: Research of the archaeological and historical topography of Bosporus (2005-), Byzantine complex at Mount Nymphaion-Izmir (2007-), Late Antique and Early Byzantine findings at Kucukcekmece excavation at Istanbul (2009-) and Istanbul, archaeological excavations and restoration works at Bosporus, the Byzantine fortress of Yoros (2010-).