Diego Piay Augusto (Pontevedra, 1979), is a professor of Ancient History at the University of Oviedo and has been working as an archaeologist for more than twenty years in northwest Spain, where he has directed more than fifty interventions at sites from different periods. In addition, between 2008 and 2012, he participated in different excavation campaigns carried out in the city of Pompeii (Naples, Italy) and in the villa of Casale de Piazza Armerina (Sicily, Italy).
In 2019, the University of Santiago de Compostela awarded him the special doctoral prize for his thesis entitled El priscilianismo. Arqueología y Prosopografía. Estudio de un movimiento aristocrático en la Gallaecia tardorromana, which was subsequently published. (L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2018). Shortly afterwards he wrote the first historical biography of Priscillian, entitled Prisciliano. Vida y muerte de un disidente en el amanecer del imperio cristiano (Trea, 2019), for which he was awarded the Anassilaos (Area dello Stretto) prize in Reggio Calabria (Italy) in 2021. His most recent work is a book entitled Villae romanas en Asturias (L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2022). His research activities also include numerous articles published in national and international journals, in which archaeological sources have always played a leading role, and lectures given at national and international level.