Course summary

This course is designed for professionals who want to improve their skills without engaging in extensive research. Our Postgraduate Diploma in Forensic Anthropology offers the opportunity to advance your knowledge and gain practical skills in this specialised area of physical anthropology. Forensic anthropology is the study of the human, or what remains of the human, for the purposes of the courts or the justice system. This Postgraduate Diploma will take you through the examination of the human skeleton. It will cover its analysis and interpretation. This will allow you to address questions of identity and identification within a legal context. This course will allow you to expand your knowledge of human skeletal anatomy. This includes: the development of the juvenile skeleton the methods and approaches used to analyse the skeleton Our PGDip also gives you the skills to understand and interpret human differences for identification purposes. You will have the opportunity to study using our unique skeletal collections. You will study the Scheuer Collection, and our large human adult, and comparative skeletal collections. You will have the chance to conduct an independent analysis of skeletal remains. You will then be able to defend your conclusions in a mock trial scenario in our Moot Court. During this course, you will study: the core principles of human osteology and what happens to the body after death the effects of decomposition on the body, and the response of bone to stress in the form of skeletal trauma You will also consider the methods and approaches used to analyse human variation in relation to the estimation of a biological identity. You will also consider how this relates to the identification of an individual. This will then be framed within the legal context by considering the role of the expert witness in legal proceedings. You will also learn from active forensic practitioners. These include Chartered and Certified Forensic Anthropologists. Through this work, you will have the opportunity to get a real-world understanding of the roles of forensic anthropologists. You will get this from within casework. This will allow you to understand the wider context of forensic anthropology.