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Principal Investigator Dr Justyna Miszkiewicz
Justyna is an ARC Future Fellow at the University of Queensland where she is leading this project funded by Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2025-2029). She is a researcher with interdisciplinary interests spanning social and biological sciences. Her technical expertise is in skeletal histology, which she has applied to a range of questions and samples across different disciplines, including bioarchaeology, biology, biomedicine, forensics, and palaeontology. What fundamentally unites all this research is understanding how the environment and societal structures impact skeletal growth and health. Her research has attracted ~$1.7 mln in funding as a PI and ~$3.3mln including collaborative grants. |
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Karen Cooke
Karen is currently doing her post-doc funded by the ARC at the University of Queensland. Her research covers a variety of interdisciplinary topics, from reconstructing individual and population health through skeletal remains to developing novel technical methods for analysing ancient diseases. She is particularly interested in exploring the biological aspects of ancient diseases, especially the microstructural traces they left in bones. Her work has focused heavily on treponematosis and its impact on human health, utilising techniques like confocal laser scanning microscopy and histological analysis of undecalcified bone. |
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Senior Research Assistant Holly Reid
Holly is a third-year undergraduate studying archaeology and anthropology at The University of Queensland. Her primary interests centre on bioarchaeology and zooarchaeology through the lens of histology. Her current research focuses on identifying differences in bone histology of humans and Australian mammals to facilitate the accurate differentiation of human and animal bone within fragmented assemblages in Australia. |
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PhD Student Tahlia Stewart
Tahlia is completing her PhD thesis at the Australian National University investigating rib microstructural variation with age and other factors using histological analyses of clinical modern and ancient human bone tissue. She also works as a Clinical Researcher at the ANU John Curtin School of Medical Research in the Li Group of the Trauma and Orthopaedic Research Unit. |
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PhD Student Phoebe Meyrick
Phoebe 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". at the University of Otago. 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. Her PhD is funded through the University of Queensland Graduate School scholarship and her thesis uses microscopic methods to investigate bone health changes with social factors in historical populations. |
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Honours student Skye Chapman
Skye completed a BA in Archaeology at UQ in 2025. She is passionate about bioarchaeology. After completing seven years of study, progressing from criminology to forensic science at Griffith University, she took a partial gap year, during which she discovered her passion for archaeology and the insight the past can provide, particularly through the study of skeletal remains, and transferred to UQ. In addition to her main studies, she completed an extra course in zooarchaeology. Skye is now eager to work in greater depth with skeletal samples, which is why she selected bone histology for her honours project. |
Undergraduate volunteers:
Claire Le Saveant, Baileigh Andersen, Bethany Latham, Leila McLachlan, University of Queensland, Australia
Claire Le Saveant, Baileigh Andersen, Bethany Latham, Leila McLachlan, University of Queensland, Australia
