Leonardo López Luján

Leonardo López Luján
Born	March 31, 1964 Mexico City
Citizenship	Mexican
Fields	Archaeology
Institutions	Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History
Alma mater	Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Université de Paris X
Academic advisors	Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Michel Graulich
Known for	Excavations in Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan. Studies on the origins of Mesoamerican archaeology
Notable awards	Fellow, British Academy, Guggenheim Fellowship, Shanghai Archaeology Forum Award

Leonardo Náuhmitl López Luján (born in Mexico City, 31 March 1964) is an archaeologist and one of the leading researchers of pre-Hispanic Central Mexican societies and the history of archaeology in Mexico. He is director of the Templo Mayor Project in Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and son of renowned historian Alfredo López Austin.

López Luján received his bachelor’s degree in archaeology from Mexico’s National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), which he attended from 1983 to 1987 as a student of Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, who directed his thesis on the Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan (1990). In 1992 he pursued doctoral studies at the Paris West University Nanterre La Défense as a student of Jean-Claude Gardin, Michel Graulich, and Alain Schnapp. His dissertation, “Anthropologie religieuse du Templo Mayor, Mexico: La Maison des Aigles” (The Religious Anthropology of the Templo Mayor, Mexico: The House of Eagles), presented in 1998 under the direction of Pierre Becquelin, obtained the highest honors.

During his academic career he has been a visiting research fellow at Princeton University (1995), the Musée de l’Homme in Paris (2002), Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks (2006), and the Institut d'Études Avancées from Paris (2013-2014), and a visiting professor at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (2000), the University of Rome–La Sapienza (2004 and 2016), the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (2011), and Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala (2011).