Academic

I am currently Professor of Forensic Science at the University of Central Lancashire. I am the Director of the Taphonomic Research in Anthropology: Centre for Experimental Studies (TRACES) animal taphonomy facility at UCLan.

Research

My research pages, including a list of my publications, can be found here.

Forensic Taphonomy

I instigated and managed the creation of the Forensic Fieldwork Facility at Cranfield University, where I worked from 2006-2013. It was an outdoor laboratory specifically designed for decomposition and taphonomy research, designed for scientifically rigorous analysis of taphonomic processes and large mammal decomposition in a controlled environment.

I also started HuddersFIELD, an outdoor taphonomy facility at the University of Huddersfield (2013-2020), which is used for advanced forensic taphonomy and decomposition research, teaching, excavation courses and much more...

I am a member of the Burial Research Consortium. The website has a lot of details about our research into human and porcine decomposition in a variety of conditions.

I am spear-heading the campaign to establish a Human Taphonomy Facility (commonly known as a 'Body Farm') in the UK. Read more about the HTF4UK campaign.

At UCLan, I currently supervise three PhD students in various projects relating to decomposition and osteology and several MSc students on the MSc Forensic Science. At UCLan, we carry out forensic taphonomy experiments at TRACES.

Teaching

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and passionate about improving the quality of forensic science teaching in schools, further education and higher education establishments. I gained my PG Cert in Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Higher Education in 2011.

I was Editor-in-Chief of Williams, A.  Cassella, J.P. and Maskell, P.D. (Eds.) Forensic Science Education and Training, published by Wiley in 2017. 

I ran the MSc in Forensic Anthropology at the University of Huddersfield, where I led the
following modules: Forensic Osteology (30 credits); Death and Decomposition (15 credits)

I taught on the following modules on other courses:
Post-Mortem Interval Estimation; Crime Scene Science Awareness; Practical Forensic Science; Essential Biology for Forensic Scientists; Specialist Forensic Workshops

At UCLan, I teach UG and MSc students on the BSc Forensic Science degree, BSc Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation degree, and on the MSc Forensic Science and Crime Scene Investigation degree. I teach topics in Forensic Anthropology, and Disaster Management and Disaster Victim Identification. I also supervise UG and MSc projects.

In my career to date, I have successfully supervised over 100 undergraduate and MSc dissertations. I have successfully supervised five PhD students to completion, and co-supervised and been Internal or External Examiner for many more.