2012 Eve Cockburn student prize 2012 for Rachel Schats
PhD candidate Rachel Schats was awarded the Eve Cockburn student prize for best podium presentation at the 19th European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association.
The meetings were held from August 27th to 29th in Lille, France. Her presentation entitled "A Forensic Approach to Medieval Gunshot Trauma", with co-authors A. Waters-Rist, R. Hermsen, A. Stamouli, G. Davies and M. Hoogland, was deemed to be an excellent example of interdisciplinary research that combines forensic and paleopathological perspectives.
Rachel Schats studied Caribbean Archaeology with a focus on human skeletal remains at Leiden University. In addition, she followed several courses focused on skeletal anatomy and palaeopathology with Prof. Simon Hillson and Prof. Tony Waldron at University College London, UK. Currently, she is a research assistant and PhD researcher in the Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology. She is analysing the skeletal remains from the Alkmaar excavation and writing the physical anthropological report. Her PhD research focuses on the reflection of urbanisation in human skeletal remains. This bioarchaeological research uses the Alkmaar material (urban) as well as skeletal remains from the Blokhuizen site (rural) as the main collections to observe possible differnece between rural and urban living. In addition, the results of the osteological analysis are compared to other, already analysed, rural and urban assemblages from both the Nehterlands and the United Kingdom in order to fully understand the consequences of urbanisation.
