NewPhilosopherA leading anatomist and foren-
sic anthropologist, Professor Dame
SueBlackisPro-Vice-Chancellorfor
Engagement at Lancaster Univer-
sity.Shewastheleadforensicanthro-
pologistforthe UKresponse towar
crimesinvestigationsinKosovoand
hasalsoservedinSierraLeone,Gre-
nada,Iraq,andinThailand follow-
ingtheAsiantsunami.Blackhasbeen
awarded two police commendations
forherworkindisastervictimidenti-
ficationtrainingandalsoforhelping
to secure convictions against perpe-
tratorsofchildsexualabuse.Shewas
awardedanOBEin 2001 anda DBE
in 2016 forherservicestoeducation
and forensic anthropology. Black is
aFellowandPresidentoftheRoyal
Anthropological Institute, a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
andtheRoyalSocietyofBiology,and
thelifetimeprofessorofanatomyfor
the Royal Scottish Academy. She is
theauthorof 14 textbooks,morethan
150 peerreviewedpublications,and
thebest-sellingbookaboutdeath,All
ThatRemains.Zan Boag: To begin, I wonder if
you could describe exactly what it is that
you do as a forensic anthropologist, and
how it differs from the work of a foren-
sic pathologist?
Sue Black: Fundamentally our job,
more than anything, is about identifi-
cation: who was the deceased in life?
For a pathologist, their prime role is
about determining what is the man-
ner of death and what is the cause of
death, so they’re looking at something
very specific like a stabbing – the man-
ner of death was a stabbing, but the
cause of death was because the blade
went through the heart and you had
massive loss of blood. Our job is not to
do that. Our job is to say who this per-
son was when they were alive, because
one of the most difficult things for a
police force is if you have a body and
the name of that person is not known.
So how do you start to track who they
might be, who last saw them, who are
the family, who are the friends, who
are the work colleagues? Most of us,
when we die, we’re going to die in an
environment where people know whowe are – whether that’s in our homes,
our cars, or a hospital, whatever it may
be. But when a body is found unex-
pectedly, getting to the name of the
individual is the most important thing
to allow the investigation to start,
and that’s where we tend to become
involved. Not necessarily when the
body is very fresh, because if you’re
recently deceased we’ll look for DNA
sampling, we’ll look for fingerprints,
and that may help us. But as a body
starts to decompose, as a body gets as
far as being skeletonised, or the body
is caught up in a fire or an explosion so
that it’s in fragments, you can see that
doing the jigsaw that brings the hu-
man person back together again and
then allows you to establish who they
were – that’s when we really come into
our fore.And is it the police force who engages
you in the first instance? Who is it usually
you are working for?
It varies. If it’s right at the point
at which a body has been found, then
yes, it will generally be the policeThe other side of life
The other side
of life
Interviewee:
Professor Dame Sue Black
Interviewer: Zan Boag