Mariana DINIZ was born in Lisbon (Portugal) on 1968. She obtained the PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology in 2004. Since 2004 she is an Assistant Professor at Department of History at School of Arts and Humanities of University of Lisbon.

She was supervisor of about 10 master thesis and of 4 Ph.D. thesis. She is currently deputy director of UNIARQ – Centre for Archaeology of University of Lisbon and the director of PhD program in Archaeology. She has a long tradition of cooperation with international teams both as a PI research or as part of a large and multidisciplinary team.

The research activity was developed in Prehistoric archaeology concerning mainly the transition from hunter-gatherer to agro-pastoralist systems and the social complexification of Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultural systems. She coordinated several archaeological excavation campaigns, material culture studies and historical interpretations debates.    

The scientific contributions have been presented in several media from peer refereed international journals, to books edition and book chapters, to conference proceedings. A special attention is also paid to the dissemination of academic knowledge to vast audiences.

Within the BE-ARCHAEO project she is the leader of the University of Lisbon team.