Irati Azpiazu Galarza is Predoctoral Fellow at UPV/EHU, where her research is funded by a Basque Government grant.

Her thesis, supervised by Jesús Lorenzo Jiménez y Juan José Larrea Conde, is entitled “Fortificaciones e incastellamento en el occidente islámico: el caso de al-Andalus durante el emirato (siglos VIII-X)”. The objective of the research is to analyse and understand the characteristics and functioning of the fortifications (husun, sg. hisn) of the Emirate period in al-Andalus, in order to assess their possible relationship with the phenomenon of incastellamento.