CURRENT TEAM
Dr. Kori Lea Filipek
University of Derby, UK
E-mail Kori
Dr Kori Filipek is a trained field archaeologist with expertise in bioarchaeology, palaeopathology, forensic anthropology and archaeology, and biomolecular analyses. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Biomedical and Forensic Science at the University of Derby. She holds an AA in Liberal Arts, a BA in Anthropology, a BA in Classics, an MA in Anthropology and Archaeology from California State University, an MSc in Palaeopathology from Durham University, a PhD in Human Bioarchaeology and Palaeopathology from Durham University, and a Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and is an accredited member of the Chartered Society of Forensic Science (MCSFS).
Her wide-ranging experience with the analysis of skeletal remains includes sites in Crete, Mycenae, El Salvador, Guatemala, California, and Romania, and led her to serve as a research associate for repatriation of NAGPRA collections in Southern California. She has lectured on human osteology and archaeology at a number of institutions, including California State University – Long Beach, the Transylvanian Museum of National History, and the Institute for Archaeology and Art History (Cluj-Napoca). She was the Principle Investigator for the Health and Migration in the Kingdom of the Gepids (Transylvania) project and sits on the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO) EDI subcommittee, and the steering committee for the Wolfson Institute for Health and Wellbeing. She also serves as a global expert in forensic isotopes for the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC).
Her research interests include infectious disease; multi-isotope analyses; medicohistorical narratives; the bioarchaeology of care; mental illness in the past; mobilities of infection; non-adult palaeopathology; Roma archaeology; and bioarchaeological ethics.
She currently serves as the Program Coordinator for Transylvania Bioarchaeology and is the Senior Project Lead for the Jucu Necropolis Project.
Dr. Katie White-Iribhogbe
Network Archaeology Deutschland
E-mail Katie
Dr Katie White-Iribhogbe (formerly Tucker) is a human osteologist and field archaeologist, with many years of experience in commercial and research archaeology. As a field archaeologist, she has worked on a wide variety of rural and urban sites in the UK and her osteological work has included the analysis of inhumations, cremations and commingled remains from all periods from the Mesolithic to the post-medieval, and from single burials to large cemetery sites.
She holds an undergraduate degree in Archaeology, an MSc in Human Osteology and Palaeopathology and a PhD on the Archaeology and Osteology of Decapitation in Britain, with a focus on the evidence for peri-mortem trauma. Since completing her PhD, she has been the osteologist for the Magdalen Hill Archaeology Research Project (MHARP) under Dr. Simon Roffey and Dr. Phil Marter at the University of Winchester where she is also a post-doctoral researcher. Her latest body of work, looking at the burials from the Saxo-Norman leprosy hospital has brought about a number of co-authored academic papers on the site and skeletons, including publications in Science, PLoS ONE, and The International Journal of Paleopathology. She is also the osteologist and lead archaeologist for a project in Ethiopia, focusing on medieval cemeteries and cave burials, under Dr. Tania Tribe at SOAS, University of London; and is working on Bronze Age collective burials from Jordan in collaboration with the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, and medieval hospital burials from Berlin in collaboration with the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte.
Katie is currently a Principle Investigator for the Jucu Necropolis Project (excavations).
Megan Oliverson, MSc
Transylvania Bioarchaeology
Megan is a bioarchaeologist who specializes in human osteology, paleopathology, and odontology. Megan first discovered her passion for bioarchaeology as a student with the Transylvania Bioarchaeology field school, and has earned a place as a permanent member of staff and a core member of our family. She received her BA in Anthropology from Utah State University and her MSc in Paleopathology from Durham University. She is currently an allied health professional assisting in the diagnosis of bone and joint disorders.
Megan currently serves as an Assistant Director and the Program Manager for the Jucu Necropolis Project.
Dr. Reanna Phillips
University of Liverpool
Dr Reanna Phillips is an archaeologist specialising in the social practices of death and burial, focusing on the Roman world through later medieval Europe. Her research primarily examines funerary practices as extended, performative processes enacted by the living. She has published on funerary performance, curated objects and social negotiation in mortuary contexts, and continues to develop interdisciplinary approaches to death, memory and the archaeology of the body. She holds a BA in Classics, an MA in the Archaeology of Death and Memory and her doctoral research analysed inhumation and cremation burial rites in Roman Britain.
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She has field experience at burial sites in Italy, Romania and in the UK where she also worked as a commercial archaeologist. Reanna has extensive experience training students in field survey, excavation principles and techniques at the University of Chester, where she was a lecturer in archaeology and heritage. She has curatorial experience in museums and archives and has led heritage projects with student mentorships, including four undergraduate student-led public conferences at the University of Chester and a collaboration between the University of Leicester and the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust to conserve and interpret a medieval hermitage near Derby. Reanna has also taught at the university level in China and incarcerated learners in the UK prison system. Her latest role at the University of Liverpool evaluated burial policies, guidance and national research frameworks across the UK, developing publications which aim to improve the support, resources and ethics of church archaeology.
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Her research interests include theoretical approaches of sensorial and embodied experience, social memory, new materialism, performance and posthumanism. In excavations, Reanna is especially interested in evidence that illustrates the sequential actions taken throughout the funerary process.
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Reanna currently serves as an Assistant Director for the Jucu Necropolis project (excavations).
Dr. Tessi Loeffelmann
Aarhus University/Vrije University Brussels
Dr Tessi Loeffelmann is a bioarchaeologist and field archaeologist with extensive experience, both in commercial and research capacities. Tessi holds a First Class MA Joint Honours degree in Archaeology and History from Glasgow University, an MSc in Palaeopathology from Durham University, and a PhD from Durham University and Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University concentrating on mobility and burial rites in the Viking Age.
Tessi served as an Assistant Director for the Jucu Necropolis project (excavations), and remains a consultant and collaborator on the project.
Katie Hunt
Paleo-oncology Research Organization
Katie received her MSc in Paleopathology from Durham University in 2012, specializing in the global history of cancer as evidenced in archaeological skeletal remains. She continues to pursue this research as the co-founder and President of the Paleo-oncology Research Organization (PRO), for which she has been recognized in 2014 as a TED Fellow, one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in the world, and the joint Foreign Policy & U.S. Department of State’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. Katie has over 7 seasons of field experience at sites in Egypt, Israel, and Romania.
In addition to assisting Transylvania Bioarchaeology’s Jucu Roman - Barbarian Necropolis excavation, she is also the primary osteologist for the Leggio and Tel Megiddo East project’s through the Jezreel Valley Regional Project in Israel, and has served as the assistant osteologist for Pacific Lutheran University’s Valley of the Kings Expedition. Her current research interests lie in the history of human health, the bio-cultural factors leading to the evolution and development of disease, and specifically the study of cancer in ancient societies
Katie formally served as an assistant site director to Dr. Katie White-Iribhogbe in the Jucu Necropolis Project, and has remained a consultant for the Jucu Project.
Interested in joining our team?