Dr Daniela Marcu Istrate is Senior Researcher at the Archaeology Institute 'Vasile Pârvan' of Bucharest, Romania. She holds a PhD in Medieval Archaeology from the University 'Babeş-Bolyai', Cluj Napoca, and a degree in History and Archaeology from the University of Bucharest. Specialized in the study of the Middle Ages in the southern part of the Carpathian Basin and focusing on medieval churches and fortifications, she has been Principal Investigator for several projects and has conducted over 30 archaeological excavations, including the large-scale rescue excavations of the Brasov and Sibiu old town centres, which have lead to the recovery of some of the largest skeletal assemblages in Romania. She has also been involved in the field of cultural heritage conservation and protection, working as a member of the National and Regional Boards of Historical Monuments of Romania.

Daniela has consistently published on the history and archaeology of Transylvania. A selection of her work can be seen at: https://soltdm.academia.edu/danielamarcuistrate.

Dr Annamaria Diana is an independent researcher currently working for projects in Romania and Ireland. She holds a PhD (2016) and an MSc (2011) in Human Osteoarchaeology from the University of Edinburgh (UK), where she participated in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching from 2011 to 2015. Her past research explored the use of multi-disciplinary data to reconstruct the influence of climate change on past populations, in particular during the Middle Ages, through the integration of archaeological and bioarchaeological datasets with historical, climatological and literary sources for the identification of demographic and paleopathological patterns. She has analysed skeletal assemblages from Medieval Transylvania and Southern Romania, and was involved in the ERC Project 'Persia and its neighbours' for the excavation and study of an Early Medieval frontier community in the Caspian Gates (Georgia). She has produced technical reports on Neolithic and Bronze Age skeletal remains from Romania, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

As classical archaeologist, she has also explored the movement of people, ideas and objects across the Roman Empire.

Researcher link

https://edinburgh.academia.edu/AnnamariaDiana

Dr Alice Toso is Junior Professor and head of the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences (BoCAS) at the University of Bonn. After completing her PhD in Archaeology at the University of York, UK, in 2019, she was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Department of Prehistory and ICTA at the Autonoma University of Barcelona.
Alice is a bioarchaelogist that specialises in the use of biomolecular techniques to reconstruct past human lifeways including dietary practices and health. She has a background in physical anthropology, palaeopathology, and light stable isotope analysis for dietary reconstruction and ZooMS.

Her PhD research focused on the impact of significant historical events on Muslim and Christian communities in Medieval and Early Modern Portugal. She has also worked on prehistoric populations in South America to investigate pre-Columbian dietary patterns as well as on different European populations of historical chronology. Among other methodologies, she employs a ‘multiple light stable isotopic approach’ and Bayesian mixing model to quantify and compare diets during pivotal historical times.

More information can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alice-Toso