Francisco J. Ferrándiz (PhD University of California at Berkeley, 1996) is Associate Researcher in the Institute of Language, Literature and Anthropology (ILLA) of the Center of Humanities and Social Sciences (CCHS) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). His reserach in the anthropology of the body, violence and social memory encompasses two main ethnographic objects: the spiritist cult of María Lionza in Venezuela and, since 2003, the politics of memory in contemporary Spain, through the analysis of the current process of exhumation of mass graves from the Civil War (1936-1939). Before being hired at CSIC, he has taught and conducted research at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Virginia, the Central University of Venezuale (UCV), the University of Utrecht, the Autonomous University of Morelos (UAEM), the University of Deusto and the University of Extremadura.
He is presently Principal Investigator (PI) of the reserach Project The Politics of Memory Exhumations in Contemporary Spain, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2010-2018). He is also a member of the Mangement Commitee of the COST Action IS1203, In Search for Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME, 2012-2016), as well as CSIC’s PI in the H2020 Project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST, 2016-2019).