Ga naar de inhoud

Course Program

The FASE Basic Course will be hosted at the Department of Medical Biology, Section Clinical Anatomy and Embryology, Amsterdam UMC, Location AMC

Address: Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ, Amsterdam

Room: AMC, L2-242

Course Lecturers

Prof. Pascal Adalian (FASE President)

Pascal Adalian is Professor and head of the Department of Physical Anthropology of Aix-Marseilles University and the current FASE President. He is the Director of the MSc in Physical Anthropology at the Faculty of Medicine in Marseilles, and is certified judiciary expert in Forensic Anthropology. He has collaborated for many years with the Forensic Medicine Department of Marseilles, for which he acts as an external consultant. His research interests and activities cover forensic anthropology, corpse identification and methodological approaches for biological profiling. He also specifically develops methods concerning age estimation of very young juvenile skeletons.

Dr. Zuzana Obertova (FASE Vice-president)

Zuzana Obertová is a biological/forensic anthropologist with doctorates in biological anthropology and palaeoanthropology from the Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia) and the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen (Germany), and in Community Health from the University of Auckland (New Zealand). In the postdoc phase, she worked on projects on age estimation and identification of living persons (the Institute of Forensic Medicine, the University Clinic, Düsseldorf, Germany), and on trauma dating (LABANOF, the University of Milan, Italy). Currently, she is employed as scientific researcher and forensic expert in the Visual Identification of Persons (ViP) at the Forensic Science Institute in Zürich (Switzerland), and she is also Adjunct Lecturer at the Centre for Forensic Anthropology, The University of Western Australia. She is Assistant Editor of the journal Forensic Science International.

Prof. Desiré Brits (FASE secretary)

I am Desiré Brits, from South Africa. I received my BSc, BSc Hons, and MSc from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and my PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. I am currently employed as an Associate Professor and Head of the Division of Biological Anthropology in the School of Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand. I am the course coordinator for the Human Biology Honours course and teach morphological (gross) anatomy and forensic anthropology to undergraduate and postgraduate students. I am a council member of the Anatomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA), an associate member of the American Association of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), and secretary for the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe (FASE). I am a level I certified forensic anthropologist (C-FASE; no.5) and am involved in forensic anthropological case analyses for the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African Forensic Pathology Services (FPS). My research focuses on dry bone taphonomy, bone trauma along with bone biomechanics, establishing identification methods using medical image modalities, as well as isotope analysis of skeletal remains to aid in identifying unknown decedents.

Prof. Eugenia Cunha (Portugal)

Eugénia Cunha has been a full professor at the University of Coimbra since 2003 and, since 2018, she is the Director of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (NILMFS) , South Delegation, Lisbon. She is/was invited teacher in Brazil, France, Spain, and USA (Stanford University). She acts as a National Consultant for Forensic Anthropology at the NILMFS in Portugal since 1997. Eugénia is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in the Anthropology Section. She was nominated president of FASE (whose co-founder is) in 2009 (until 2016) and she is now vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Forensic Anthropology. She is a Member of Pathology and Anthropology Sub-group, Interpol DVI Working Group. She is acting as a forensic anthropology expert in international missions in several countries focused on crimes against humanity and human rights violations. Her research interests cover age and ancestry estimation methods and skeletal pathologies.

Prof. Ann Ross (North Carolina, USA)

Ann H. Ross (PhD, D-ABFA, C-FASE) was awarded her Ph.D. in 2000 from the University of Tennessee. Professor Ross is a Board Certified Forensic Anthropologist and is Internationally Certified by the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe. She is currently a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and is the Director of the Forensic Sciences Institute at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. She consults for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s and law enforcement agencies across the state of North Carolina. Prof. Ross has been committed to human rights and disaster work and has deployed to Bosnia after the Genocide, worked for a number of years for the Panamanian Truth Commission and is still the forensic anthropology expert for the Institute of Legal Medicine, has worked in Chile, helped identify deceased after Hurricane Katrina and US Citizens who perished in the Haiti Earthquake. Her lab (Forensic Analysis Lab) was named one of 30 most awesome College labs by Popular Science Magazine (http://www.popsci.com/awesomelabs).

Prof. Maryna Steyn (South Africa)

Professor Maryna Steyn is a Biological Anthropologist who qualified as a medical doctor in 1983 (University of Pretoria) and then obtained a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1994. She consults to the South African Police Service and Forensic Pathologists on decomposed and skeletonized human remains and holds a level 1 accreditation as forensic anthropologist from FASE (Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe). In the past 25 years she has completed more than 400 forensic anthropological case reports and has been involved in several high-level investigations and repatriations. She played a pivotal role in establishing forensic anthropology as a subdiscipline in South Africa, resulting not only in the training of many post-graduates, but also in bringing case analysis into the formal stream of investigation. She conducts research on human remains from forensic contexts and archaeological sites, focusing on skeletal identification and palaeopathology. She has published ±140 papers in scientific journals, as well as several book chapters. She is co-author of the book “The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine”.

Drs. Mike Groen (The Netherlands)

Mike Groen is a certified forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) and a staff member at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers (UMC), Department of Medical Biology. His past academic and professional experience relates to GIS modelling, field archaeology, human taphonomy and biological anthropology. He is responsible for the introduction of forensic archaeology in the Netherlands in 2005 and for the creation of the Forensic Archaeology group within the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) in 2013. He has been involved in  more than 2000 forensic archaeological/anthropological cases, the Netherlands and abroad. Since 2022 he is heading the Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology unit at the NFI. His current research interest include validation of age estimation methods, GIS predictive modelling, forensic taphonomy and scene of crime science.

Prof. Dr. Rick van Rijn (The Netherlands)

Rick R. van Rijn graduated as a medical doctor at the Erasmus Medical University Rotterdam in 1994, he obtained his PhD at the same university in 1998. In 2002 he finished his training as a radiologist, at the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, and the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam. Since 2003 he works a paediatric radiologist at the Emma Children’s Hospital – Amsterdam UMC. As of 2010 he also holds a part-time position at the department of Forensic Medicine, Netherlands Forensic Institute. In June 2014 he was appointed as professor of forensic radiology with an emphasis on forensic paediatric radiology. He’s a founding member of the Dutch Expertise Center of Child Abuse and has held/holds several positions in professional societies amongst others chair of the International Society of Forensic Radiology and Imaging, chair of the scientific committee of the Dutch Society of Forensic Medicine, and general secretary of the European Society of Paediatric Radiology. Besides his clinical work he’s involved in scientific research mainly in the field of imaging of child abuse and imaging in rhabdomyosarcoma. He has published >250 peer reviewed publications, many on child abuse imaging, wrote a book on forensic aspects of paediatric fractures, edited two paediatric radiology books, and several book chapters. He is an editorial board member of European Radiology, Pediatric Radiology, Forensic Radiology, BJR, and Eurorad.

Prof. dr. Roelof-Jan Oostra (The Netherlands)

R.J. Oostra, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Clinical and Comparative Morphology, in the Department of Medical Biology, and head of the section Clinical Anatomy and Embryology at the Amsterdam UMC. In 2018 he realized ARISTA, the first and presently only human taphonomic research facility in Europe. His core business is teaching anatomy and embryology in various (bio)medical curricula. His research focusses on clinical morphology and congenital malformations. He presently supervises eight PhD students.

Dr. Lida van der Merwe (The Netherlands)

Lida van der Merwe was born and raised in South Africa where she received a BSc., BSc. Hons, and MSc. from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. In 2007 she relocated to the Netherlands for her PhD. study and was rewarded her doctorate degree in 2010 at the LUMC, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. She is currently a senior lecturer and principal educator in the Department of Medical Biology, Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, University of Amsterdam. She is course and practical coordinator of various courses within the Bachelor and Master of Medicine and the Master Forensic Science at the University of Amsterdam. She is secretary of the Stichting ter Financiering van Barge’s Anthropological and board member of the Stichting Nederlands Museum voor Anthropologie en Praehistorie. Her core responsibilities are teaching anatomy and embryology in various (bio)medical curricula and developing and giving introductory courses in forensic anthropology in forensic (master) courses and courses hosted by the dutch police academy. Her research focuses on forensic- and osteoarcheological anthropological methodology related to age and sex estimation and paleopathology.