Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras

Invitado de Honor

Arsuaga has a PhD in Biological Sciences from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), where he teaches Paleontology. He is the director of the UCM-Carlos III Health Institute Mixed Center for Human Evolution and Behavior. Most of his scientific career has been dedicated to the sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca, which he co-directs. He is the scientific director of the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos.

He has received numerous awards, including: Prince of Asturias for Scientific and Technical Research; Castile and León; Community of Madrid; Sent Soví; Sociedad Geográfica Española; Ciudad de Alcalá; COSCE a la Difusión de la Ciencia; Cruz del Mérito Medioambiental de España; Medalla de Plata de la Comunidad de Madrid; GHR von Koenigswald Lecture (Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt); “Drago de Oro” from the Ateneo de Cádiz; Zilarrerezko Luma from the Bilbao Book Fair.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the Board of Directors of the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris, the Real Academia de Doctores de España, and the Reales Academias de Medicina de Zaragoza y de Andalucía Oriental.

He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Burgos, Polytechnic of Valencia and Zaragoza.

He has written hundreds of scientific publications, including eight papers in Science and ten in Nature. He has directed twenty-one doctoral theses.

His popular science books have been translated into multiple languages: Chosen species: the long march of human evolution, Neanderthal's necklace: in search of the first thinkers, Los aborígenes, Al otro lado de la niebla, Amalur. Green fire: the life force, from the atom to the mind, El reloj de Mr. Darwin, El primer viaje de nuestra vida, Breve historia de la Tierra con nosotros dentro, El sello indeleble, Vida. La gran historia, Life as told by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal, La muerte contada por un sapiens a un neandertal and Nuestro cuerpo.

Other activities involving the participant:

One Thousand Young People with Juan Luis Arsuaga

Claudia Luna Fuentes

(México, 1969)

She holds a PhD in sciences and humanities for interdisciplinary development from the Autonomous University of Coahuila; a master's degree in history of contemporary society from the Ibero-American University Extension Saltillo, and a bachelor's degree in communication sciences from the Autonomous University of Coahuila. She has published among others, Los frutos del sol (MacMillan Castle, 2005) a children's book from the collection La Otra Escalera, included in the classroom library for preschool children. Her books of poems include Casa de Sol (FECA-Conaculta, 1995), Ruido de hormigas (Gatsby Ediciones, 2005), Carne para las flores, personal anthology (Aullido Libros, Spain 2011) and Donde la piel (Mantis Editores/Conarte, 2019). She appears among other anthologies, in Anuario de poesía mexicana (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), in Hacia un azul imposible. (CEPE-UNAM/El Tapiz del Unicornio, 2023) and in Semillas de nuestra tierra. Muestra ecopoética mexicana (Grupo de Investigaciones Poéticas de la Madre Tierra and Cactus del viento, 2023). She won the Manuel Acuña Municipal Poetry Prize in 2008. In poetry she received a scholarship from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (Fonca 2003-2004), stimuli as a young creator and as a creator with a career from the Faculty of Economics, Accounting and Administration (FECA) and the Stimulus Program for Artistic Creation and Development (PECDA) on several occasions. She was a fellow of the Regional Fund for Culture and the Arts (FORCA)-Northeast 2011-2012, in Lima, Peru, where she taught workshops on object poetry. She was the guest of honor of the Tangier International Festival 2013 in Morocco, where her poetry translated into Arabic was read. Some of her work has English, German, Portuguese and French versions. Among the magazines in which she has published, the contemporary poetry magazine of Valencia  21veintiúnversos stands out; and in Lichtungen, in the section Literature of the North of Mexico, her poems were translated by Christoph Janacs. She participated in the exhibition of the Contemporary Photography Program section Coahuila, Tasar el humor (Museo de las Artes Gráficas, 2018). She generated material poems for the Bergman Chair of the UNAM. Her translated poems were printed on the wall at the Cultural Institute of Mexico in Paris, accompanying sculptures by Avelina and Alejandro Fuentes Quezada in the exhibition Continuous Extinction (2021). Environmental photographs and video poems were exhibited at the Mohammed Drissi Gallery, in Tangier (2021). She participated in a literary table and in the Coahuilense visual art exhibition entitled Segar el mar with a visual poem, within the 49th Cervantino Festival (2022). A selection of sound poems worked around the poem “Piedra de Sol”, by Octavio Paz, were left to be heard at the Marie-José Tramini and Octavio Paz Memorial, at the San Ildefonso College, within the Nature and Poetry Festival 2023 organized by the Octavio Paz Extraordinary Chair. Part of her poetry has been translated in 2024 into Polish by the poet and novelist Julia Fiedorczuk. In June 2024 she was invited by the University of Warsaw to share her creative processes. Currently, Dr. Pawel Piszczatowski, from the Center for Environmental Humanities of the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Warsaw, works on an article about his acoustic-visual and material work. She works as director of scientific dissemination and projects at the Desert Museum, where she is a founding member.

Other activities involving the participant:

Poetry Room
Literature with eggs and machaca