Dr. Ximena S. Villagran is an Associate Professor at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo (MAE-USP) and the founder of its Microarchaeology Laboratory, the first and only laboratory of its kind in South America. A leading researcher in South American geoarchaeology, her research combines soil micromorphology, FTIR and micro-FTIR spectroscopy, and micro-CT imaging to reconstruct the formation processes of archaeological sites, with a particular focus on shell middens (sambaquis), coastal and lowland occupations, and human–environment interactions across the Atlantic coast of Brazil, the Brazilian Plateau, the Amazon, and the Atacama Desert.

She holds a degree in Anthropological Sciences from the Universidad de la República (UdelaR) and a Master's degree in Archaeology from MAE-USP. She obtained a PhD in Sciences from the Institute of Geosciences (IGc-USP) and a PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She was also an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Archaeological Sciences (INA), University of Tübingen, Germany.

She currently coordinates international research projects on landscape domestication, coastal and inland site formation, and the archaeology of shell mounds, collaborating with institutions including the Universidad de la República, the University of Texas at Arlington, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and the Universidad de Chile, among others.