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Maria Castaneyra-Ruiz

Liverpool School of Art and Design

Faculty of Arts Professional and Social Studies

Email: M.CastaneyraRuiz@ljmu.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 231 9605

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Dr María Castañeyra Ruiz graduated in Art History from the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, in 2008. Shortly afterwards, she began her PhD in Physical Anthropology, in the Department of Ancient History and Anthropology and the Department of Anatomy, Pathology and Histology of the University of La Laguna, where her PhD thesis focused on the ancient aborigines of La Gomera. She obtained the highest degree of excellence with Cum Laude distinction in July 2015. She continued to work in the field of archaeology and anthropology, shortly before receiving the research grant from the Canary Islands 'Dr Manuel Morales Foundation', in 2017, she carried out postdoctoral studies in craniofacial reconstruction at the award winning Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University.

In Face Lab, Maria was a co-investigator for the project "The Quest For Ancestral Faces" and performing 50 craniofacial depictions of Prehispanic Canarians, which were exhibited in the Museum of Gran Canaria. The exhibition was co-curated by Francesca Phillips and Prof Caroline Wilkinson. For more information on the project: https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/microsites/ancestral-faces-canary-islands. Maria was awarded The Selwyn Award 2020 from the Royal Photography Society for her research in this project.

Maria worked as a PDRA on a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers, Migrant Disaster Victim Identification (MDVI) project from 2019-2020. This project involved travel to the Canary Islands and Senegal to collect information and create a network. This project is the first attempt to address the MDVI problem in the Canary Islands and was focused on the identification of deceased people who attempted to cross the Atlantic from the West Coast of Africa to the Canary Islands. Maria is also leading on the establishment of a Face Lab branch in the Canary Islands and creating an international network for MDVI. For more information about the project: https://www.migrantsdvi.com/. Different outcomes resulted from the BAKF, such as the online MDVI Symposium 2022 organized by Maria.

Since then, she has been employed on a series of MDVI projects, including the QR-funded collaboration with the University of Thrace and the Platform for Missing Migrants in Greece, and a European-funded COST MDVI Action 2023-2027. Recently, this line of research received 'THE Award 2023' for 'Research Project of the Year in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences'.

Maria is currently the Grant Holder Manager /Administrator and Grant Awarding Coordinator for the COST MDVI Action. The Action is to develop new practical ante-mortem and post-mortem data collection, analysis and reconciliation methods for the identification of deceased migrant disaster victims,
and to co-design a collaborative process between identification professionals and families of missing migrants for past, present and future migrant disaster. For more information and to join the action here: https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22106/

Since 2019, Maria has been consistently working in Face Lab on producing archaeological facial reconstructions for public presentation in museums and the media.

Maria teaches on the Art & Foundation Year at the Liverpool School of Art & Design on the modules: 3101FNDLCP Preparing for Success Academic Skills, 3102FNDLCP Investigating Liverpool and 3001FNDLSA Exploring Materials Process and Practice.

Languages

Spanish; Castilian
English
French
Italian

Degrees

2015, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, PhD Physical Anthropology
2011, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Spain, MA Mediation and Heritage Management in Europe.
2008, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, BA Arts History

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