ALVARO
ARRIZABALAGA VALBUENA

Alvaro Arrizabalaga (Oviedo, 1965) has been a lecturer (full Professor since 2018) in the Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology department at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) since 1995, shortly after defending his doctoral thesis on the lithic industry of the Early Upper Palaeolithic in the eastern Cantabrian region. He has five six-year periods of research and six five-year periods of teaching activity, and, since 2002, he has been a member of successive Prehistory research groups, led until 2012 by Ignacio Barandiarán, between 2012 and 2018 by Javier Fernández Eraso, and of which he has been an IP since 2019. He has been intensely active in the field, directing or co-directing more than 100 prospecting and excavation campaigns in the territories of Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia, Álava, and Asturias since 1985. Notable among these activities are the works at Labeko Koba, Lezetxiki, Irikaitz, Jaizkibel, Bolinkoba, Zabaletxe, Eskuzta, Silibranka, and Agarre, all of which primarily concern hunter-gatherer societies of the Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. These and other sites have led to a list of more than 300 publications, including 11 monographs, 70 book chapters and conference proceedings, and more than 100 journal articles. He has collaborated with more than 250 national and international colleagues (primarily from American, British, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Polish, and Czech universities and research centres). These publications include Nature, PLOS ONE, Journal of Human Evolution, Journal of World Prehistory, Current Anthropology, Quaternary International and L'Anthropologie. His Google Scholar profile shows, as of the date of this review on 28/09/25 (https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=i9EonB8AAAAJ&hl=en), a total of 4,302 citations, with an estimated H-index of 30 and an estimated i10-index of 101. Alvaro Arrizabalaga has directed or co-directed eighteen research projects for the Pyrenees Working Community, MSCA, the State Research Plan and regional calls for proposals, the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the Basque Provincial Councils. In addition to the above platforms, he has collaborated on and continues to collaborate on several ERC projects (PALEOPLANTS, QUINA WORLD, MULTIPALEOIBERIA, SHADOWS, SPEGEOCHERT), COST (iNEAL), and REDES, among others. Many collaborators on these shared projects, through teams and networks, have been added as external collaborators in successive proposals from Research Groups in the Basque University System. It has conducted ongoing work to transfer research findings to the environment, primarily in municipalities and territories across Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia, and the continental Basque Country. This activity has sometimes been financed through collaboration agreements (EKAIN Foundation, Association des Amis des Grottes d'Isturitz et Oxocelhaya, José Miguel Barandiarán University Chair, Oñati Town Council, among others), and sometimes through research contracts with public-private entities (Álava Provincial Council, Mendaro and Barrika Town Councils, CALCINOR Group, for example). The resulting financial contributions have been used to conduct research programmes and disseminate results through lecture series, informative publications, museum exhibitions (BIBAT, San Telmo Museoa, Altamira Museum, Tito Bustillo Cave Art Interpretation Centre), and municipal exhibition halls (Arrasate, Hondarribia, and Oñati). To date, he has supervised 18 doctoral theses, eleven of which have received international recognition and four of which (Alejandro Prieto, María Ángeles Medina, Lourdes Herrasti and Antonio J. Romero) have been awarded the Extraordinary Doctorate Prize in Science. He is currently supervising another nine doctoral projects.