2014/08/12

FT Magazine August 8, 2014: Inside the mortuary with the UK’s leading forensic scientists

Professor Sue Black knows exactly what she wants to happen when she dies. “I want all the tissue off and I want to be restrung as a skeleton in that corner so I don’t miss out on anything,” she says, pointing across the dissection room at the University of Dundee Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (Cahid), where she is director. Her chosen resting place is a prime spot to watch over a room containing dozens of tables, each holding a bulky shape covered in a plastic sheet. Underneath are cadavers that have been donated to the centre and embalmed using an innovative method. The board near the doorway bears a detailed list of instructions: “Close computer files … No phones … Spray body …”

The work done in this room lies at the heart of a department that handles some of the UK’s most cutting-edge research on forensics and anatomy. “We’re not just a department that teaches – we’re a department that does,” says Black. She and her colleagues have worked on everything from murder cases to training police officers in mass victim identification to helping break up Scotland’s biggest paedophile ring in 2009. Black’s own career as a forensic anthropologist has spanned the exhumation of mass graves in Kosovo and the analysis of photographs allegedly depicting torture victims in Syria. more