Posted on 24/09/2022

Professor Dame Sue Black set to reveal the secrets of forensic science in the 2022 CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution

 

One of the world’s leading forensic investigators and founding members of BAHID, Professor Dame Sue Black, will deliver this year’s CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution, it was announced today.

In a series of three Lectures to be broadcast on BBC Four in late December, Dame Sue will share the secrets of the real-life scientific detective process she uses to identify both the dead and the living.

With the public more fascinated by science and forensics than ever, Sue will reveal why we shouldn’t believe everything we see in our favourite TV crime dramas. Using stand-out cases from her remarkable career, she’ll explore the huge leaps forward forensic science has made, as well as some of its limitations, and what the future might hold. And she’ll reveal how real life can be far stranger than fiction.

Dame Sue has played a lead role in some of the world’s highest profile forensic investigations, helping to identify the victims and perpetrators of conflicts and disasters internationally, including the conflict in Kosovo where she was the lead forensic anthropologist to the British Forensic Team, and the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification Operation. Sue is currently President of St John’s College Oxford.

Dame Sue said: “It is an enormous honour to be chosen to present the 2022 CHRISTMAS LECTURES. I’m looking forward to revealing the crucial but often unseen work of forensic investigators and to fuelling some young imaginations with this amazing area of science.

“And as discussing and critically examining science is so important to its application in our lives, I’ll also be asking some challenging and thought-provoking questions about the future of forensic science, whether our identity, actually, is wrapped up more in our memories than it is in our bodies, and what that might mean for crime detection.”   

To find out more information, please visit: https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures