SHOC welcomes new member Patxi Pérez Ramallo! Patxi will be working as a postdoctoral researcher on the Make-Up of the cities project under the supervision of Bart Lambert.
Patxi Pérez Ramallo (Santiago de Compostela, Spain) holds an International PhD from the Forensic Analysis Program at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, 2021), an MSc in Archaeological Sciences from the University of Bradford (UK, 2015), and a BA in History with a triple major in Archaeology, Medieval History, and Prehistory from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC, 2012).
He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Social History of Capitalism (SHOC) Research Group at the Department of History, Archaeology, Art History, Philosophy and Ethics at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Within the “Make-Up of the Cities” project, he applies stable isotope analysis to investigate diet, mobility, and social differentiation in medieval populations from urban centres across present-day Belgium, contributing to a deeper understanding of early urbanism and its demographic impact.
His doctoral research explored the origin and development of the Camino de Santiago during the Middle Ages through osteological, stable isotope, and aDNA analysis. During his first postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (Jena, Germany), he specialised in the bioarchaeology of marginalised groups in medieval Iberia.
In parallel, Pérez Ramallo has actively collaborated on archaeological projects covering a broad chronological spectrum—from Prehistory to the Spanish Civil War—in Armenia, Ecuador, Mexico, Norway (where he also held a postdoctoral position), the Horn of Africa (Somaliland, Djibouti, Ethiopia), and Spain. His interdisciplinary approach combines bioarchaeology, isotope geochemistry, and historical archaeology to explore broader questions of identity, inequality, and human mobility in the past.