If Sue Black hadn't missed a call requesting that she fly to Iraq she would not have been around to take another call from the University of Dundee asking her to set up a centre of excellence in forensic anthropology.
Sue has taken up a chair of forensic anthropology in the School of Life Sciences after ten years out of academia. But it is that absence that has inspired her back to teaching. In the ten years since she taught anatomy in Aberdeen she has worked on forensic cases for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that have sent her all over the world including three years in Kosovo on war crimes. She says, "The students who worked with me on the projects did not know their stuff.
They had gone into a postgraduate qualification in forensic anthropology with no scientific background and had been trained on Anglo-Saxon burials. The courses that we will be starting in Dundee will ground the students strongly in anatomy before moving to apply the science in forensics."
Sue was hugely impressed by the way that obstacles were overcome to enable her strategy for establishing a raft of courses and a centre of excellence to become a reality. So much so, she was impelled to take up the offer of a teaching post.
She explains, "With experience of other universities, I was so impressed in the way that Dundee moved quickly and had the autonomy at faculty level to make decisions. I knew immediately that I had found an environment where ideas could be realised and innovation was valued."
Professor Black is currently preparing a series of taught postgraduates including Human Identification, DNA and Face Reconstruction, and an undergraduate course which will commence as soon as 2005 seeking approval and ratification from the National Crime and Operations Faculty, the Association of Chief Police of Scotland and the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners. Dundee will be the only university in the UK to offer an undergraduate course in human osteology - studying the bone from its construction to its decomposition. She will be leading anatomy and integrating it closely with the teaching of forensics.
"I would like to target recruitment at overseas students. We have the expertise here to train them in forensic anthropology so they can return home and use their skills in their own countries.
The plan is to establish the University of Dundee as the centre in the UK for advanced forensic sciences, harnessing the existing expertise in dentistry, the human identification centre and the Kestrel 3D laser scanning and imaging research centre at DJCAD."
Professor Black is Chair of Anatomy & Forensic Anthropology.