About Us

Liv Nilsson Stutz

Liv Nilsson Stutz is a bio-archaeologist and a professor in archaeology at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Her research has focused on different aspects of burial archaeology, including archaeothanatology, body theory, and ritual theory and she has developed new approaches to synchronising archaeological methods and theory, as exemplified in her analysis of burials from prehistory. She has been active in debates on multi- and transdisciplinarity in archaeology. She has also done extensive research on the repatriation and reburial debates and published broadly on the topic. She is a member of the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and the Archaeothanatology Working Group. Together with Sarah Tarlow she has edited the Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial (2013).

Sarah Tarlow

Sarah Tarlow is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Her interests are in the archaeology of death and burial in post-medieval Britain and Ireland. She has also published extensively on archaeological ethics, the archaeology of emotion, post-medieval archaeology, and the archaeology of the body. Her books include, among others, Bereavement and Commemoration: an archaeology of Mortality (Blackwell 1999), The Archaeology of Improvement (CUP 2007), A Fine and Private place (Leicester 2012), Ritual Belief and the Dead Body in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (CUP 2011), The Archaeology of Death and Burial in Postmedieval Europe (De Gruyter 2015), The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain (Palgrave 2017) and most recently, with Emma Battell Lowman, Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse (Palgrave 2018).

Rita Peyroteo Stjerna

Rita Peyroteo Stjerna is a bioarchaeologist specialized on mortuary archaeology, trained in ancient DNA, radiocarbon and stable isotopes, and archaeothanatology. She is experienced in archaeological research using museum collections and has worked with human remains in museums since 2011 in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Her PhD, Death in the Mesolithic, focused on the role of mortuary ritual practice in Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. She continued her research on hunter-gatherers at the Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Human Evolution Programme in Uppsala (2016-2022), where she also directed the Biomolecular Archaeology Course. Currently, she holds a researcher position with the NEOSEA ERC StG at the University of Gothenburg, investigating the origins of Megalithism in Europe. She is a researcher with the Ethical Entanglements project since November 2022. 

Hayley Mickleburgh

Hayley L. Mickleburgh is an archaeologist with research interests in forensic archaeology, forensic taphonomy, the archaeology of death and burial, and the use of 3D visualization methods for research and education. Her recent research has focused on the use of actualistic forensic taphonomy and digital 3D reconstruction and simulation in the study of (forensic) archaeological human burials. She has conducted a number of actualistic experiments on human decomposition at the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University (FACTS), and continues to develop experiments to improve the documentation and interpretation of forensic and archaeological (mass) graves.

She holds a PhD in archaeology, and is a certified forensic facial reconstruction artist as well as a Maxon certified 3D producer (3D modelling and animation). Hayley is also member of the council of the British Association for Human Identification (BAHID), president of the Netherlands Association for Physical Anthropology (NVFA), and listed as forensic archaeologist in the National Expertise databank of the Dutch Police Academy. Find out more about Hayley and her research here.

Hayley was an active collaborator in Ethical Entanglements from January 2022 to July 2022, when she left the project for her new position as Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam. She continues to contribute to our work with feedback and through co-authorships.