Maria Giovanna Belcastro

I study human skeletons from an evolutionary perspective and I have been responsible for the anthropological museum collections since 2005. My research also addresses the sustainability of this heritage. On behalf of UniBo, I coordinate the European project COLUMN (Colonial Legacies of Universities: Materialities and New Collaborations) (2025–2029). I am part of Spoke 6 (History, Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage) within the PNRR Changes program, and I was a member of UniBo’s Self-Steering Committee on Cultural Heritage and the UNA-HER-DOC doctoral college (2020–2022). I serve on the Advisory Board of the ERC project Making Ancestors (PI: John Robb, Cambridge, 2020–2025). I coordinated the H2020 MSCA BABY PACE project (2020–2023) and the STVA PhD program (2021–2024). In 2008, I established the Master’s in Skeletal Anthropology, Forensics and Paleopathology (with UniMi and UniPi). Since 2023, I have been an Accademica benedettina of the Institute of Sciences of Bologna and am currently President of the Italian Anthropological Association (2025–2029).