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Our Panel Discussion will be led by established researchers from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., academia, museums and collections, and consultancy).
Our Panel Discussion will be led by established researchers from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., academia, museums and collections, and consultancy).
Dr Sharon DeWitte
Dr Sharon DeWitte
Dr Zichun Jing
Dr Zichun Jing
Jelena Bekvalac
Jelena Bekvalac
Don Walker
Don Walker
Participants at BURG2021 will have the opportunity to submit questions to the panellists before, during, and up to two weeks after the panel discussion.
Participants at BURG2021 will have the opportunity to submit questions to the panellists before, during, and up to two weeks after the panel discussion.
Join us at
Q&A at
meet the panellists
meet the panellists
Sharon dewitte
Sharon dewitte
Professor, University of South Carolina
Professor, University of South Carolina
Dr DeWitte earned her PhD in anthropology, with a focus on biological anthropology, at the Pennsylvania State University in 2006. She came to USC in 2011 after having been an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a member of the Human Biology Program at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Dr DeWitte is a biological anthropologist with research specialties in bioarchaeology, paleoepidemiology, and paleodemography. She engages in the reconstruction of life, health, disease, and demography in the past using assemblages of human skeletal remains. Her research examines the biological, environmental, economic, and social factors that affect and interact with variation in health and mortality; the ecology, epidemiology, and consequences of diseases in past human populations; and the co-evolution of humans and pathogens. She applies hazard modelling to address issues of heterogeneous frailty and selective mortality in past populations, and has examined risks of mortality during the medieval Black Death, in post-Conquest Roman Britain, in medieval monastic communities, and in Industrial-era London. Her research has primarily focused on uncovering variation in health and demography before and after the medieval Black Death and risks of mortality during the epidemic.
Zhichun Jing
Zhichun Jing
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Pacific Asia Archaeology, The University of British Columbia
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Pacific Asia Archaeology, The University of British Columbia
Dr Jing earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1994. He has conducted fieldwork in China, Greece, and the United States.
His areas of interest include the archaeology of Shang civilization, early urbanism, culture contact, environmental archaeology, the archaeology of collapse and sustainability, archaic jades, and archaeological ceramics. His current work has focused on the archaeology in Anyang, the last capital of the Shang Dynasty, in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
His research has been kindly supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada (2003-2006, 2006-2009, 2009-2013, 2014-2019), the National Science Foundation (1997-2000, 2001-2003), the Henry Luce Foundation (1997-2000, 2007-2011), Canada Foundation for Innovation (2002-2005), Malcolm H. Wiener Foundation (1997-2001), National Geographic Society (2000-2002), Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (2004-2005, 2006-2008), American Council of Learned Societies (2008), the University of British Columbia Research Funds (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014), Martha Piper Research Fund (2010-2012), National Social Science Fund of China (2013-2016), Shanghai Academy (2012-2020), et al.
Jelena Bekvalac
Jelena Bekvalac
Curator of Human Osteology, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London
Curator of Human Osteology, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London
Jelena has a Master's degree in Osteology, Palaeopathology and Funerary Archaeology from Sheffield and Bradford University.
Since 2003 Jelena has been based at the Museum of London and was an original member of the research osteologist team with the establishment of the Wellcome funded Centre for Human Bioarchaeology. As part of the Wellcome team she analysed and recorded on to the Wellcome Osteological Research Database (WORD) skeletal material from different sites and time periods that make up the unique stratified human remains collection curated at the Museum.
In 2007 Jelena became a Curator of Human Osteology and in the summer of 2008, was deeply involved in the Skeletons: London's buried bones exhibition at the Wellcome Trust.
Her specialist interests include palaeopathology, osteoarthritis, Medieval and post-Medieval bioarchaeology. She is co-author of the book Manufactured Bodies: The Impact of Industrialisation on London Health.
don walker
don walker
Senior Human Osteologist, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)
Senior Human Osteologist, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)
Don is a Senior Human Osteologist at MOLA and has worked in the Osteology team since 2003. His role involves recording and reporting on human skeletal remains. Don also has excavation experience, working on urban and rural sites in Britain and Europe.
Don has contributed to numerous MOLA monographs, including those on medieval Spitalfields, St Marylebone Church burial ground, post-medieval burial grounds in Tower Hamlets, Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and Holywell Priory. Some of this work has involved collaboration with academics at the University of Bradford and City University London. Don has also written an English Heritage funded text book on palaeopathology in London and numerous academic papers.
Recently he has contributed to the Digitised Diseases project in collaboration with the University of Bradford and the Royal College of Surgeons. This involved textured 3D laser scans of pathological type-specimens for a web-based teaching resource. Don also assists the Metropolitan Police in forensic enquiries. He has featured in a number of television documentaries.
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