Visiting Fellow
Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar
Biography
Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar’s research interests include the modern historiography about the ancient world and the cultural intersections between local Iberian communities – Tartessos – and the Phoenicians. In recent years he has developed a line of research on the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis on the coastal communities of the Iberian Peninsula, in the framework of the projects The Tsunami in the Cultural Representations of the Ancient World, and Earthquakes and Tsunamis in the Iberian Peninsula: Social Responses in the Longue Durée. In these projects, he has analyzed the symbolic keys to the perception of tsunamis in the ancient world, studied the apotropaic responses to this type of phenomenon, and analyzed the resilient responses of coastal communities in southern Iberia to environmental shocks with catastrophic consequences. His work is interdisciplinary, combining approaches and evidence from classical studies, history of religion, archaeology, and geoarchaeology. He is particularly interested in historical dynamics and cultural representations in the long term. He has co-edited, with Francisco Machuca Prieto, the volume Historical Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Archaeology in the Iberian Peninsula (Springer, 2022).