Alfredo González-Ruibal is a researcher with the Institute of Heritage Studies of the Spanish National Research Council (Incipit-CSIC. Although trained as a prehistoric archaeologist specialising in Atlantic Europe, for the last 15 years he has worked on the archaeology of the contemporary past and African archaeology. He has explored the darkest side of modernity (dictatorship, war, colonialism) and forms of resistance against the State. He is also interested in borderlands, long-distance trade and political theory. He has now active projects in Spain, Ethiopia and Somaliland. His research on the archaeology of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship has led him to excavate in battlefields and concentration camps, but also to reflect on the limits of public and community archaeology. He has published numerous articles in some of the top journals of archaeology (Current Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Antiquity, World Archaeology, etc.).

Recent books include An archaeology of resistance. Materiality and time in an African borderland (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) and An archaeology of the contemporary era (Routledge, 2019). He has also edited the collections Reclaiming archaeology: beyond the tropes of modernity (Routledge, 2013) and Ethics and the archaeology of violence (with Gabriel Moshenska, Springer, 2015). He is the managing editor of the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology.