Professor Katharine Robson Brown
B.A., Ph.D.(Cantab.)
Current positions
Professor in Mechanical Engineering
Department of Engineering MathematicsProfessor of Biological Anthropology
Department of Anthropology and ArchaeologyDirector of the Jean Golding Institute
Jean Golding Institute
Contact
Media contact
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Research interests
My research explores the microstructure of living tissues and their response to changing and extreme environments; innovating methodologies for the capture, computational modelling, analysis and interpretation of data describing complex material and structural characterisation.
Biological anthropological applications of these methods include forensic identification, the regulation of hard tissue growth and development, and the study of biomechanical systems in extinct species. This includes exploring human evolution, and functional anatomy at the level of microstructur, osteoarchaeology, and the African diaspora, postcranial morphological variation within modern human populations, biomechanics of the spine in humans and other animal models,
Engineering applications include employing the ontogeny of tissue microstructure as a model of programmed transformation in 4D materials, biomimetics in engineering design, and multi-scale modelling of complex hierarchical structures and systems.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Untold Stories: Challenging research behaviours for studying the past
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
Untold Stories challenges current research prejudices regarding how certain groups of individuals in the past remain underrepresented in historical and social research. The project aims to tell their stories using…Managing organisational unit
Department of Anthropology and ArchaeologyDates
21/03/2022 to 31/07/2022
Stroke Imaging And Clinical Database For AI
Principal Investigator
Description
Stroke treatment often involves resource intensive, potentially harmful treatments, including interventional neuroradiology, vascular surgery and neurosurgery, making individualised treatment decisions very important. Clinical decision-making requires mentally combining data from fragmented…Managing organisational unit
Dates
01/06/2021 to 30/11/2021
Finds Stories: Addressing mobility through People and Object Biographies
Principal Investigator
Role
Other
Description
'Find Stories' aims to study the impact of sort term mobility in South East Europe through object biographies. Applying 'Creative Biographies' ‘Finds Stories’ will examine the life cycles of objects…Managing organisational unit
Department of Anthropology and ArchaeologyDates
15/02/2021 to 29/09/2023
Beyond the networked city: building innovative delivery systems for water, sanitation and energy in urban Africa
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Civil EngineeringDates
01/04/2020 to 31/03/2023
Understanding the impact of HIV infection and its treatment on the effect menopause has on the musculoskeletal health of African women
Principal Investigator
Role
Collaborator
Description
The scale-up of antiretroviral treatment has dramatically improved survival, such that increasing numbers of women with chronic HIV are now reaching the menopause across Africa. The menopause is a period…Managing organisational unit
Dates
01/10/2019 to 31/07/2021
Thesis supervisions
Health and socio-economic status in early medieval Wales : an analysis of health indicators and their socio-economic implications in an early medieval skeletal population from the cemetery site at Llandough, Glamorgan
Supervisors
Unearthing late medieval children : health, status and burial practice in southern England
Supervisors
First-hand experience: a methodology for exploring bone architecture adaptation and biomechanics in human hands and zebrafish models
Supervisors
EXPLORING THE PERSISTENCE OF FEMALE GENITAL CUTTING AND INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Supervisors
People, Patients and Preparations
Supervisors
Radiographic evaluation of primate skeletal development
Supervisors
Arnos Vale South Bristol
Supervisors
Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, or Both
Supervisors
Understanding Use of Bear Products in Southeast Asia
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
23/09/2022Reply to
Nature Communications
3D assessment of intervertebral disc degeneration in zebrafish identifies changes to bone density that prime disc disease
Bone Research
Dimorphism in dental tissues: Sex differences in archaeological individuals for multiple tooth types
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Kinship and social organization in Copper Age Europe. A cross-disciplinary analysis of archaeology, DNA, isotopes, and anthropology from two Bell Beaker cemeteries
PLoS ONE
Reptile-like physiology in Early Jurassic stem-mammals
Nature Communications
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Department of Anthropology and Archaeology