Part of the 2022 University of Western Australia Archaeology Seminar Series.
Images of human faces have become an important source of evidence in forensic investigations. Facial images are used as evidence of identity for suspects and victims in a variety of cases, including terrorism, abuse and interpersonal violence, child pornography, identity fraud, burglaries, or traffic law violations. Visual identification of persons on images is based on the anthropological comparison of morphological facial features, which is a method admissible in the court of law for conclusions regarding identity. This is in contrast to facial recognition, which is an intuitive, holistic approach, based on the innate ability of humans to recognize previously seen faces. Forensic facial image identification can only be undertaken by facial examiners, who are trained to analyse morphological facial features in one-to-one image comparisons. In this presentation, I will talk about the practice of forensic facial identification from the perspective of a forensic anthropologist, who worked as a facial examiner in a European law enforcement agency.
About the speaker:
Dr Zuzana Obertová is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in forensic anthropology at the Centre for Forensic Anthropology at the University of Western Australia. Her previous research projects ranged from identification of living persons on images through histological age estimation to trauma dating. She is Assistant Editor at the journal Forensic Science International, and co-editor of the book ‘Statistics and Probability in Forensic Anthropology’. Her current research interests encompass morphological assessment of skeletal remains, including non-metric dental traits, trauma analysis, stable isotope analysis, facial image comparison, and forensic data interpretation.
When: 2-3pm AWST, Wednesday 18 May 2022
Where: Online via Teams