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The Analytical Zen Podcast
Biography and Research: See Orcid.org/0000-0001-8344-6582 (presenting 100+ academic works)
Dr. Geraldine M. Dowling SFHEA has over 20 years of experience in forensic and analytical toxicology, food safety, drug residue testing, method validation and ISO 17025 laboratory accreditation. She also has more than 10 years in academia as a university educator. She was past elected member of Academic Council at Atlantic Technological University and member of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Working Group. Her research spans forensic and clinical toxicology, with a focus on forensic medicine, clinical practice, drug testing, harm reduction and laboratory accreditation.
Dr. Dowling is an internationally recognized researcher and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), awarded for excellence in teaching, research, and leadership. She is the creator and host of The Analytical Zen Podcast, designed to make complex scientific concepts accessible to students and the public (available on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts).
She serves as Vice Chair (formerly Treasurer) of the United Kingdom and Ireland Association of Forensic Toxicologists, representing forensic practitioners across England, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Channel Islands. She is also the elected regional representative for Ireland with the International Association of Forensic Toxicologists, a member of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists (USA), and an elected member of the London Toxicology Group Committee.
Dr. Dowling has trained professional staff and students in ISO 17025-accredited national government laboratories in Ireland, including The State Laboratory, Teagasc, and the Marine Institute. She is a Principal Investigator, supervising postgraduate students (PhD/MSc), with research interests in analytical chemistry, forensic science, clinical/medical toxicology, metabolomics, medicine, food safety and education.
Dr. Dowling contributed her expertise to the Irish Government's "Emerging Drug Trends and Drug Checking Working Group", which aims to introduce safer, harm-reduction strategies for drug use.
She is a contributing author, reviewer and editor for international journals, including Drug Testing and Analysis, Journal of Analytical Toxicology and Forensic Science Review. She has written, edited, and co-authored four books.
Dr. Dowling is Editor-in-Chief of the IACFT Journal and the Science Undergraduate Research Experience Journal.
She is nominated as a Honorary Professor at Kingston University, holds a Visiting Senior Lecturer appointment at King’s College London, UK and holds a Honorary Senior Lecturer appointment at Barts and The London School of Medicine & Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, UK. She previously served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin and as a past Visiting Professor at the National University of La Plata, Argentina.
Dr. Dowling’s work has had a lasting impact, with Ireland’s Marine Institute using her methods in aquaculture monitoring since 2006 and the U.S. FDA adopting her research for drug monitoring since 2011.
www.linkedin.com/in/geraldine-dowling-msc-pgdip-phd-sfhea-2b66b835
The Analytical Zen Podcast
Bones Tell Stories: The Reach of Forensic Anthropology
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In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Tania Delabarde, leading forensic anthropologist at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Paris, where she has been instrumental since 2013 in the identification of unidentified bodies and coordination of Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) protocols.
Dr. Delabarde’s career spans some of the world’s most complex humanitarian and post-conflict contexts, from her early work with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the UN Mission in Kosovo, to missions across South America and Africa. Since 2011, she has also worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the Ivory Coast, Mali, Burundi, Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Congo and Central African Republic.
A long-time contributor to INTERPOL’s DVI Working Group, Dr. Delabarde brings a rare blend of field experience and scientific depth to the challenges of forensic identification.
We also explore her cutting-edge research with the CNRS BABEL UMR8045 team, where she investigates:
🦴 Skeletal markers for identification
🦴 Bone lesions through histological analysis
🦴 Bone diagenesis and postmortem change
Join us for a conversation at the intersection of science, justice and humanity with one of the most respected voices in forensic anthropology today.
Introduction to Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Tanya Delabarde
Speaker 1Welcome to the Analytical Zen Podcast, where we delve into the minds of leading scientists and professionals exploring forensics, toxicology, medicine and health in terms of mind, body and spirit. I'm your host, geraldine M Dowling. What should you expect in the Analytical Zen podcast? Well, we'll dive into cutting edge research and topics that inspire curiosity, the latest in forensic and clinical toxicology pursuits, and engaging conversations and perspectives from disciplines outside of these fields. We're thrilled to have a forensic anthropologist working at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Paris as our guest on the Analytical Zen podcast today.
Speaker 1Dr Tanya Delabarde graduated from the Paris-Sarbonne University and holds a Master of Science, phd and habilitation at Dirigeur de Recherche or HDR. Since 2013, she has served as a forensic anthropologist at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Paris, where she coordinates the identification of unidentified bodies and disaster victim identification protocols. Her professional background includes work with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Office of Missing Persons within the United Nations Mission in Kosovo and the French Institute of Andean Studies in South America. Since 2011, she has collaborated with the International Committee of the Red Cross in various contexts, including Ivory Coast, mali, burundi, georgia, Abkhazia, south Ossetia, armenia and Venezuela, as well as with the International Criminal Court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Dr Della Bard has been a member of the Interpol Disaster Victim Identification Working Group since 2016. Her research focuses on skeletal markers for human identification and the histological analysis of bone trauma. She teaches forensic anthropology. We're delighted to have Dr Tanya Dellaarde as our guest on the Analytical Zen podcast. Welcome, tanya.
Speaker 2Thank you, Geraldine. It's a pleasure for me to be here.
Speaker 1Well, tanya, you're our first guest that we've had. That has your background and experience, so I am delighted to get to finally chat with you after it's been a long time planning and coming. So, tanya, how did your journey into forensic anthropology begin?
Speaker 2Oh well, geraldine, it starts really in my childhood. Very early I was completely fascinated with bones and of course, at this period I was looking at animal bones decomposed, because I was living in the countryside. So I was really interested about biology, about anatomy, and so I started my journey like this and what does your professional work involve?
Speaker 1Tanya Like what type of cases would you analyze?
Speaker 2So, geraldine, I'm working in the Forensic Institute. So, géraldine, I'm working in the forensic institute. That means that I can work with a pathologist on a very recent case what we call fresh case and, for example, because there is some traumatic injuries on the skeleton or because there is a problem of identification. But normally a forensic anthropologist is more involved in the examination of a skeletonized body or remains.
Speaker 1What are your main areas of interest, Tania?
Speaker 2I mean, forensic anthropology is a very big scientific discipline. There are many researches on various topics. It could be identification, it could be analysis of traumatic bone injuries. So you have a lot of ways to develop your scientific research. So my own interest is basically two major things, which are basically identification and analysis of bone injury, because when we meet skeletonized bodies, of course we want to know who is this person, and the second question is what happened to this person. So these are my two main areas of interest.
Speaker 1And Tania in those two main areas. Is there one that's particularly more important to you than the other?
Speaker 2I think the questions are fundamental for to be able to assess what happened to someone. So, I mean, identification is very crucial question, but it is true that in my research I'm more involved with the analysis of bone injury. So I would say that the second aspect this is something that I am more involved in.
Misconceptions and Case-Changing Discoveries
Speaker 1What's something about forensic anthropology that most people misunderstand or don't expect? Tania?
Speaker 2I think because of lots of video programs or TV shows like Bones, there is a misunderstanding of what is a forensic anthropologist. People imagine that forensic anthropologists are working alone, that they do facial reconstruction or fancy technology. But basically our work is really coming back to the basic meaning that even if we have a lot of technology, we are starting from the first step, meaning examining the remains, looking at the bone. We can do, of course, ct scanner. We can do a lot of complementary analyses like toxicology. I know, for example, you are very interested in toxicology, so we can do toxicology on bones. We can retrieve DNA from bone and from teeth. So there is a lot of things that we can do in forensic anthropology. But it is far, far away from what you can see on television, because in television they always solve the issue, they always identify the person or they always determine what happened to the person, but in reality it's not always the case, unfortunately.
Speaker 1Tanya have you ever uncovered evidence that completely changed the direction of an investigation?
Speaker 2Oh, yes, it happens a lot of times because, you know, I think the main challenge in our discipline is when a body is found decomposed. It is just like for the people, for police authorities, for judges, even for people, you know, it seems like a lot of time has passed, a lot of evidence has been lost and there is not so much involvement. So I will give you an example. I was called upon body recovery. That took place in a forest, there was a lot of sand where homeless people used to live and sleep, and at that time the forensic pathologist told me don't worry, I can go by myself and I will call you if there is anything relevant. And I said, okay, he's the one, he's the forensic pathologist on duty. So I let him go to the body recovery and they found the body in a tent and when this body was brought back to the mortuary, initially they thought it was a homeless person and they thought it was a male.
Speaker 2And because the body was completely decomposed, nobody did search around the tent and nobody was trying to recover this body, like if it was a criminal act. You know, they just considered that okay, it's a homeless guy, he died of natural disease and that's it. But then when we had a look to the body, we found that first it was not a male, it was a female. So we found that this female had her hands tied in the back and she has some ligature around the neck. So it changed completely the story. We call a criminal police officer, we call scientific police in order to recover evidence that were not found at the first body recovery. So you see, this kind of example for me are very important, meaning when the body is decomposed people lose the right way to work. Many times they are acting like if a lot of time has passed, a lot of evidence has been lost and for a lot of people a body who is decomposed has no chance to be identified or very few chance, and of course complementary analysis will be very difficult to proceed.
Speaker 1Tania, what's the most unusual or unexpected place you've ever found human remains?
Speaker 2Oh, I can give you a strange example, because, as I'm working in the Forensic Institute in Paris, one day the police officer bring me a gym bag a gym bag that was found in the streets and in the gym bag there was some human remains.
Speaker 2Because what happened is a lot of people for a long time have been collecting anatomical bones from anatomical collection, for example, or some dentist or some doctors were looking for bones in cemetery in order to train with anatomy and, of course, at some point they don't know what to do with those bones, those human bones.
Speaker 2So we have a lot of human bones that are found in places like garbage or things like that. But that was my first time that I found human remains in a gym back in the city center of Paris. This is something that we are observing since 10 years, meaning that before those human remains were kept in family and then people tried to have them at the house or at the university. But now, more and more, there is lots of ethics going on that it's not a good thing to keep anatomical collections. So the society is changing also with this, with the management of human remains. From an anatomical point of view, people are afraid to have human bones at home, so they don't know how to do with those bones and they just abandon them in the street or in the garbage or the trash bin.
Speaker 1And how do you, Tanya, balance the science with the human story behind each case?
Speaker 2Well, this is a very interesting question.
Speaker 2I mean, sometimes it is true that it could be very impacting. For example, if you are working in a country where the war has done a lot of victims, where you are working on a criminal case that involves a child, you have to keep your feeling for you. I mean, we have to remain scientists, which does not mean that we have to stop our feeling. This is something normal to have empathy for the victims. But at the moment we are working, we have to be concentrated and we have to remain scientific, meaning that even if sometimes you cannot determine what happened or you cannot participate to know what is the cause of death, you have to remain a scientist. I mean, sometimes we don't have enough evidence, or sometimes the evidence that are there are controversial or they are not enough to go from one hypothesis to another. But you don't have to leave the human story behind each case, bringing you outside of science. We have to remain scientific. That's the only condition that we can give justice, the right element to know what happened to the person.
Speaker 1Tania, has any case ever challenged your understanding of human anatomy or decomposition anatomy?
Speaker 2or decomposition. Oh yes, after so many years working in different contexts, different countries, with different people, I saw a lot of human anatomical variation and some aspects that are very unusual, even sometimes things that are not documented in a human anatomical book. But I would say that decomposition is probably the field that is more interesting. Why? Because sometimes the case that we are dealing with are in complete contradiction with the theory that we learned and, of course, now a lot of investigators are working on decomposition to try to understand it better. Because for a long time we thought that external factors were involving the decomposition variation, but now it find out in the last studies that internal decomposition is also very important. Our own bacteria are making our decomposition completely different in the same context than another body. So this is something that really, I mean for me, amazed me. So that's why, also, when I was saying just before, we have to remain scientific, this is also sometimes mean that we have to have the theory, but sometimes the practical cases are a big contribution to the theory.
Speaker 1Tanya what role does intuition play in your work?
Speaker 2That's a good question. I try not to use it too much because of course sometimes we want to solve the case and sometimes some information will bring us to one aspect, but then we have to consider all the aspects of the work. For example, if the police officer may suspect that the person was stabbed, we are going to look for a sharp wound injury on the bone, but sometimes we will find something else. So you always have to remain very open and of course your intuition can be useful, but I try not to be driven by my intuition. Basically I try to work on each case with all the aspects of the case. I don't try to remain in one direction or one hypothesis. I'm always trying to see all the possible hypotheses for that precise case.
Speaker 1Tanya what's one tool or technique in your field that you think is underrated or that you couldn't do without?
Bone Histology and Cold Case Court
Speaker 2For me, definitely it's bone histology. I've been trained to work microscopically. Basically, when I learned forensic anthropology, I was only working with macroscopic approach or imaging. But I mean when you go to the level of microscopy and when you understand better the bone structure, the bone iteration in relation with decomposition or the bone healing process when you have an injury, you are opening a complete field and you know when you are working on a body which is decomposed, it's essential to know if this injury happened long time before death or around death or after death, death as a result of the decomposition. We cannot mistaken a post-mortem injury, related, for example, to the discovery of the body by, for example, a machine or something like that, with something that happened around death. So for me, bone histology is really something that is essential in my practice.
Speaker 1Tania, I've heard of the existence of a special court in France, set up since 2022. It's dedicated to cold cases and serial crime. Can you tell us a little bit more about this for our listeners?
Speaker 2Yes, because this court for us. It's an amazing opportunity to work on those cases. Most of those cases went through autopsy, for example, 10 or 20 years ago, and of course, the techniques were very different and, for example, forensic anthropology was really at its beginning 10 or 20 years ago. So now, with all the new technique, all the new technology in DNA, all the new technology in toxical analysis, we can have a lot of information, even with a skeleton that went through autopsy and went below the ground for a decade or more. Of course there is an iteration of the skeleton. Sometimes we don't have still hair or nails to work on it, so we will basically base all our analysis on the bone tissue or the teeth. But still it is a very important of gathering the information, and I will explain why. When the body goes through decomposition, the only thing that will remain for several decades, and sometimes more than decades, it's the skeleton, it's the heart tissue and the fact that when a body received some trauma it can be bullets, it can be knives, it can be blunt force trauma we will have those evidence still on the skeleton and this is exactly what is forensic anthropology. The bone tissue, because it's a hard tissue, is capable to retain evidence from this trauma and this is our goal to interpret and to analyze this trauma. So those cold cases in France are absolutely important and I have the chance to work with the special court and to show them what forensic anthropology can do and what forensic anthropology cannot do.
Speaker 2Sometimes we bring more information and sometimes, unfortunately, we don't find too much information.
Speaker 2But, for example, I'll give you just I'm sharing one case with you, géraldine, because I know you're interested in toxicology we identified the remains of a young woman who has been missing for 20 years in France and she was buried without a name, like Jane Doe, in a cemetery. And we were able to identify her because when we did toxicology on the bone and we had some remaining hair and nails, we were capable to have all the molecules involved in a psychological disease. So it was really amazing because when we took the result from 20 years, at the moment of the autopsy, the toxicology was able to find only one molecule and we, 20 years after, we were able to find five molecules, of course, on very degradated matrices, because we work only with degradated air and we work also with degraded bone. But still, if you have the right technology and toxicology also have evolved a lot in the technology, so we were able to identify her first thanks to the toxicological results, and of course then we confined with the DNA.
Speaker 1I'm fascinated by Tanya your work with bones, to be honest with you, because it's a matrix in toxicology that I've not actually had the chance to work with yet.
Speaker 2Yes, and really this is something that will be developed in the future. Those cold cases actually are really for us also the opportunity to test test methods, because we know what happened, basically because there was previous autopsy, there was previous analysis performed 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. So now we can have a look back to the body and knows what we can do, what we can apply and compare. So it's just an amazing opportunity and, of course, a part of this opportunity, our main goal is to try to solve those issues identifying missing person, identifying perpetrator. We retrieve DNA, we retrieve a lot of information that were missed or were not seen 10 or 20 years because there was no, for example, imaging or things like that, and because now the bone are exposed, so they are I mean there to be, to be analyzed fully tanya are there any particular substances that you found in bones in some of your work in the past that surprised you.
Microscopy Techniques and Final Thoughts
Speaker 2Ah yeah, I mean you know there is something that it says in France when the scientific police was creating in the 19th century. You have two main figures. You have Alphonse Bertillon, who was the anthropologist who first started working on the identification purposes with the Bertillon system. I will not enter in detail because it was more related to living person more than to the dead people but I mean he was one of the than to the dead people, but I mean he was one of the figures of the scientific police. And then you have Professor Locard, who was a pathologist.
Speaker 2And Professor Locard said something very interesting. He said all the contacts leave a trace, and this was long before DNA. I mean the professor wanted to say that when two persons enter in contact there is an exchange, an exchange of fibers, an exchange of other bone. For example, a saw, a knife or something like that. You can find exogenous, the wounding agent, and the bone is so hard that it leaves some particles. So, for example, we were able to find plastic fibers, we were able to find particle metallic from a knife. So we are always looking for any evidence that can link the object with the body.
Speaker 1Tania, what type of microscopes do you use in your investigations?
Speaker 2That's a very interesting question. So for me it's very important to start like I explained to you previously on the beginning. I'm working first examining the skeleton microscopically, then I use what we call a stereo microscope in order to have more detail, more magnification, to see some injury, to be sure that what I'm looking is actually a real injury related to death, or if it had some specific features that related to death, or if it had some specific features that helped me to say it could be post-mortem. And then the last microscope that I'm using is, of course, the slide that I use with histological slides. So it's a microscope to read histological slides, the same one used in histopathology, the same one used in histopathology, and it helps me, of course, to amplify the knowledge regarding this injury. Is there healing response to this injury? Is there any hemorrhage infiltrating this injury?
Speaker 1So you see these are my three steps of work with my cases. It's great for our students, I guess, to hear the value of these instruments in working on real cases, you know, in institutes like yours and, in addition, around the world. Tania, before we conclude, I'd like to ask you about your plans for the near and distant future.
Speaker 2Well, now I'm preparing a bone histology workshop. We have a meeting with the Forensic Association of Forensic Anthropology in Europe, so end of August we have this bone histology workshop. That's the first one for the faith. Of course there have been other bone histological workshops, but we are working now on this, trying to show the importance of not only working microscopically but also including microscopical analysis in our decomposed and skeletonized remains.
Speaker 1Tania, before we conclude, is there anything you'd like to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2Oh yes, First of all, Geraldine, I want to thank you because I think it's an amazing opportunity, those podcasts that you are doing, because you give us also the opportunity to share with your students listeners, and what I just want to say is you have to use science. Science is very important. Try always to verify your findings. Try always to read international scientific articles. Try always to read international scientific articles, even if you don't consider the results or even if the results are problematic to you. It's very important to keep an open mind, to see who is working on what, to see all the results, and it's something essential, I think, especially when you're working for the justice.
Speaker 1Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the Analytical Zen podcast and sharing your personal experience and professional experience.
Speaker 2Thank you very much, Aileen. It was really a pleasure for me to exchange. Thank you very much, Aileen. It was really a pleasure for me to exchange and I'm only apologizing for my terrible English-French speaking.
Speaker 1Well, if you're apologizing for your terrible English-French speaking, I'm definitely going to apologize for my French pronunciation. So, tanya, thank you, and, to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Analytical Zen Podcast. Be sure to join us next time and stay curious.