Leonor Peña Chocarro, PhD is a Senior Tenured Scientist at the Institute of History (CSIC) where she coordinates the macro-remains unit of the PSSP Research Group (Paleoeconomía y Subsistencia de las Sociedades Preindustriales).
In 1990 she was awarded by the Spanish Government a 4-year fellowship to carry out her PhD in London, which was
completed in 1995 at the Institute of Archaeology (UCL). She is an expert in plant macro-remains and prehistoric agriculture with special interest in the western Mediterranean region. Her main line of research is the origins and
spread of agriculture in the region through the study of plant remains, although her work has expanded to include later periods. She has been the principal investigator of several research projects, such as the ERC-Advanced Grant AGRIWESTMED, and the CSIC partner of the European MEMOLA project. Moreover, she has been co-PI (together with P. Anderson, CNRS) of the ESF funded project, The dynamics of non-industrial agriculture: 8000 years of resilience of innovation. She has taught in universities of Spain, Italy, and Morocco and has been Visiting Professor at the Italian Universities of Cagliari, Padua and Rome La Sapienza. She is currently teaching archaeobotany for the Master’s Degree programmes of Granada and Huelva Universities. Between 2011 and 2016 she was Deputy Director of the CSIC
Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (Italy).