Irene Torreggiani
DPhil Student in Environmental Archaeology
School of Archaeology
Torreggiani is currently completing her Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, investigating prehispanic adaptation to hydroclimatic changes in central Nicaragua, supervised by PACEN Director and National Geographic Explorer Alexander Geurds. Her works studies how prehispanic populations adapted to a dynamic alluvial environment through archaeological excavations and paleoenvironmental reconstruction (using pollen). She is directing her own archaeological project, PRISMA (Interdisciplinary Archaeological Project Santa Matilde), as part of her doctoral research. Since 2020, Torreggiani has collaborated with fellow National Geographic Explorer and photographer Alvaro Laiz on the "The River Flow Memory Book" project, which uses storytelling to record the local knowledge on watery environments and interpret PRISMA's archaeological results. She is also working with partners to create Nicaragua's first Pollen Atlas and generate a 1,200 year paleoclimatic record from El Tigre Lake (Leon, Nicaragua).
