Goldsmiths University of London
Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW
UK
What happens to the body after death? How are bodies identified? How much – if any – of what you see in detective dramas is true? Forensic scientist and writer Dr Brooke Magnanti explores the good, the bad, and the patently ridiculous of forensic fiction, and talks about what we do know when it comes to human identification.
Biography
Brooke Magnanti, one of Observer’s “Faces of 2009” and Guardian newspaper’s “Best British Weblog 2003,” is a scientist and author. She is writer of the bestselling Belle de Jour series of books, which were adapted into the hit ITV show “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” starring Billie Piper. She is also the writer of The Sex Myth.
Brooke has been featured by more than 100 media outlets including the Sunday Times, Independent, New Scientist, Grazia, The Scotsman, HardTalk, Sky News, This Week and Newsnight. She is a columnist for the Telegraph’s Wonder Women, former science editor of Cliterati, and has contributed pieces to the Guardian, Baffler, Big Issue, and Town. Brooke was featured in an episode of Stephen Fry’s Planet Word, was one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women, and is a popular public speaker on the themes of biometric and forensic science, sexualisation and culture, and internet anonymity and identity.
Brooke was born in west central Florida in 1975. She received a B.Sc. from Florida State University in 1996, where she studied in the Anthropology and Mathematics departments. She later studied for a master’s in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Sheffield in England, and earned a Ph.D. in the Forensic Pathology department there. She has worked in forensic science, epidemiology, chemoinformatics and cancer research.
You can find out more about Brooke at www.sexonomics.co.uk.
This talk is part of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit Invited Speaker Series, 2014/15.