We are very excited to welcome Phoebe Meyrick into our research team who is joining us as a PhD student on a UQ funded scholarship. Phoebe is joining us from the University of Otago where she just completed her masters thesis titled "Investigating Medical Intervention, Healthcare and Social Wellbeing in Colonial Otago Through Paleopathological Analysis of the W.D. Trotter Skeletal Pathology Collection". Prior to her masters, she completed a BA with Honours in Anthropology also at the University of Otago, working on a thesis titled "Paleopathological Analysis of a Commingled Assemblage from Eriama (ACV), Papua New Guinea". She also holds a BSc in Anthropological Science from the University of Auckland.

Phoebe's PhD will investigate bone health changes with social factors in medieval and other historical populations using microscopic methods. 

In December 2025, Phoebe was also elected the Australian studnet representative for the Australasian Society for Human Biology and will serve on the committee for 3 years.

Congratulations to Phoebe both for securing the UQ PhD scholarship and her success in joining the ASHB executive team!

It's that time of year again, earlier this month we attended the annual conference for the Australasian Society for Human Biology and this year we were hosted by the wonderful University of Auckland and their organising committee. As always, ASHB was a captivating, energising, and friendly conference, with many ideas shared, projects planned, and much coffee consumed. 
Both Justyna and Karen presented projects we have been working on this year. Justyna presented some amazing micro-CT work on hominin remains which has never been undertaken before (keep an eye on forthcoming publications), while Karen presented a poster on technical work which examines how we collect histomorphometric data. 

Karen was also elected onto the ASHB executive as Social Media Representative, joining Justyna who is currently Vice President of the society. Congratulations Karen!

Over November, members of the Bone-Loss team have hit the road and the sky, travelling to collect data and samples for our research.

Karen is currently visiting the Australian National University to collect data for a collaborative research project with Dr Stacey Ward, developing a new method for the quantitative measure of surface changes to bone. 

In more distant journeys, Justyna is visiting the hard tissue histology lab at the University of Kent in the UK, collecting medieval samples for our project. This part of our project is in collaboration with Dr Patrick Mahoney, and will collect biochemical data at the histological level. Here she is with an image of Homo naledi enamel histology!

Huge congratulations to our Honours student Bella Pearce, who submitted her Honours thesis today. Her thesis was titled "Age and Socioeconomic Status Effects on Medieval Female Cortical Bone Remodelling" and investigated femur intra-cortical bone remodelling variation with age and social status in a sample of medieval females, finding limited differences between low and high SES groups, but some variation in bone remodelling with age. Bella was an interdisciplinary student based at the School of Biomedical Sciences and working on her samples in the School of Social Science. 

Congratulations Bella and fingers crossed for positive examination reports!

Justyna will be presenting some pilot data from our broader project at the upcoming National Conference of the Polish Society in Poznan, Poland in September 2025. Her talk, co-authored with collaborator Rita Hardiman, reports on negative allometry of macroscopic and microscopic bone growth measures within the human femur using samples from the Melbourne Femur Research Collection. Justyna and PhD student from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan will also deliver a 3-hr workshop introducting participants to bone and tooth histology. 

More here

JOIN US TO DO YOUR PHD!

We have a fully funded PhD scholarship available for a domestic (Australia/NZ) student. The tentative title of the project is "Social inequality and bone health in ancient human populations". In this project you will work with existing bone mineral density and histology data from archaeological human populations. You will draw on modern human datasets to undertake temporal and spatial comparisons with ancient populations. You will apply a social determinants of health approach to these data and aim to create a model of human health resilience and vulnerability in an archaeological framework. 

Apply here by September 2025!

WE'RE HIRING!
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Senior Research Assistant (Bioarchaeology)
​This is an exciting opportunity for a passionate Senior Research Assistant (Bioarchaeology) to join our project. The successful applicant will provide specialist scientific knowledge and skills in support of high-quality research outcomes at all stages of the project, including data collection and analysis, and dissemination of project results via research publications, conference presentations, and project website. The Senior Research Assistant will join a vibrant group of international researchers in archaeology, anthropology, and bone biology, and have access to world class microscopy laboratory facilities and industry networking opportunities.

Applications close Wednesday, 21st May 2025 at 11.00pm AEST

​Apply here
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