Team

Dr Maria Maclennan is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher, writer, and lecturer. As the world’s first ‘Forensic Jeweller’, her research interests are primarily concerned with exploring instances of death, crime, and disaster using jewellery as an investigative lens. Rooted in co-design and craft practice, her award-winning practice has sought to apply design thinking to far-reaching areas such as forensic science, disaster victim identification, drug trafficking, and policing. She received her practice-based PhD in Forensic Jewellery from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) at The University of Dundee in 2018. The first research of its kind in the world, her practice-based doctorate was funded through an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) CASE (Collaborative Awards in Social Science and Engineering) PhD Studentship (Capacity Building Cluster Grant RES 187-24-0014).

Both an academic and practitioner, Maria is currently a Lecturer in Jewellery and Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) at The University of Edinburgh, in addition to the Service Design Manager for the Police Service of Scotland, the UK’s second-largest police force. She has worked outside, inside, and alongside high-profile organisations internationally, deploying across the globe to support and advise policing agencies on jewellery recovered with unidentified human remains.

Maria has previously held academic appointments as a Lecturer in Designing Out Crime (University of Dundee); Research Assistant in Design Against Crime (University of the Arts London); and as a Visiting Lecturer at academic institutions in the UK, USA, Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Brazil, Australia, and South Africa, including the Royal College of Art (RCA) and V&A Museum of Design. She is a regular keynote speaker to audiences of both design and forensics alike, having delivered almost 100 talks to the likes of the National Crime Agency (NCA), British Transport Police (BTP), INTERPOL DVI Hungary, European Academy of Forensic Science (EAFS), Royal Institute of Great Britain, and TEDx.

In 2013, she was awarded a prestigious Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Fellowship to conduct research with the Home Office College of Policing and What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (WWCCR). She was awarded a similarly prestigious Fellowship in 2014 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the highly competitive International Placement Scheme (IPS), through which she spent time as a Research Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. researching jewellery recovered after 9/11.

In addition to her academic appointments, Maria has almost 7 years of service with the Police Service of Scotland. Following three years as a Forensic Imaging Officer with the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), she undertook a secondment as a Scene Examination Trainer in the Forensic Services Unit before being promoted to Academic Research Lead, where she was responsible for leading the force’s approach to Evidence-Based Policing (EBP), working closely with academic colleagues in The Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR). Following a subsquent year as a Senior Service Designer with the Scottish Government where she led upon several high-profile projects related to Social Security, Maria returned to Police Scotland to take up her current position as Service Design Manager.

Passionate about public engagement and knowledge exchange, Maria is a regular contributor to national television and radio. Her work has been the subject of profiles by The Financial Times, The Times, BBC World News, Cognizant, The New York Times, Ripley’s ‘Believe It! Or Not’, and most recently by UKRI (in their ‘101 Jobs Changing the World’ campaign). Her commitment to developing innovative, practice-led outputs and engaging diverse stakeholder groups has been evidenced through exhibitions (e.g., Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities Research Showcase, 2016), physical artefacts (e.g., jewellery created for the ‘100 Jewels by 100 Women’ installation, 2021), short films (e.g., ‘The Dead Are Jewels to Me’, commissioned by the BBC in 2021), podcasts/radio (e.g., BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live, 2017), television appearances (e.g., Heirloom Detectives, 2022), and high-profile consultancy (e.g., Murder, Mystery and My Family, 2018). She was recently awarded an Outstanding Early Career Research Impact Award by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (2022) and shortlisted as a BBC AHRC New Generation Thinkers Finalist (2022).

As Principal Investigator on Identifying the Displaced, Dr Maclennan leads on project management and coordination, in addition to contributing her expertise in forensic jewellery, forensic imaging and catalogue design.

Dr Jan Bikker is the founder of the Platform for Transnational Forensic Assistance, a Foundation (Stichting) registered in the Netherlands since 2018. Under the umbrella of the Platform, a project called the ‘Forensic Missing Migrant Initiative‘ was set up . This initiative aims to address and highlight the national and cross-border challenges in the forensic management of missing and unidentified deceased migrants. Jan has worked on the issue of missing migrants and forensic identification since 2015 and advises on several multidisciplinary academic research projects on missing migrants as well as projects to explore novel methodologies for forensic identification. Through the charity, he provides free assistance to families of the missing and contributes his forensic expertise to assist civil society groups, humanitarian organisations and missing person units.

Jan previously worked as a Forensic Advisor for an international humanitarian organisation working on the development of forensic programmes to improve the national and regional responses to the issue of missing and deceased migrants in Europe and their identification. He previously conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Dundee on the FASTID-project which aimed to establish the first international police database at INTERPOL’s General Secretariat in Lyon to manage cross-border enquiries concerning missing persons and unidentified bodies in the event of disasters as well as day-to-day policing. He contributed to the development of uniform international DVI standards and the new INTERPOL DVI forms and training programmes for police forces and forensic experts to identify missing persons and unidentified bodies according to the internationally recognized standards.

He is an experienced forensic anthropologist working with UK police forces on forensic anthropological casework and participated in international DVI operations including Thailand, Haiti and Peru. He has worked with fresh, decomposed and skeletalised human remains since 2003. Jan is regularly invited for conference presentations on DVI, migrant identification and human identification, both nationally and internationally. The research includes novel ante-mortem data collection interview protocols, human rights issues in DVI (including personal data protection and post-mortem privacy), improving communication with relatives of missing persons in disasters, the role of culture in DVI and DVI in areas of conflict and expert on body modifications for human identification. Lectured and supervised projects on forensic identification within the renowned Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee. He received his PhD in Forensic Anthropology from the Faculty of Medicine/Department of Forensic Pathology at the University of Sheffield.

He is a Council Member of the British Association for Human Identification (BAHID) and the British Association of Forensic Anthropologists (BAFA)

In Identifying the Displaced, Dr Bikker is contributing his expertise on the forensic aspects of human identification in the migration context, migratory routes and dynamics, design of the catalogue, writing of the case narratives, documentation and analysis of the personal effects, case study research, background research of items, quality control procedures, and outreach to families of the missing.

Harry Lawson is an artist and documentary filmmaker. Although rooted in the tradition of observational documentary, his films are made through active collaboration with subjects and participants. Harry has collaborated with various organisations and brands, including Block9, The Football Association, Mundial Studio, Vice, Time Out, Centre for the Future of Work, Institute for Ageing, Law Magazine, Umbro, Puma and Armani. He holds a BA in English Literature from Kings and an MA in Ethnographic Documentary Film from UCL.

Harry has worked internationally on films about music, most notably in Morocco, Croatia and the UK. His documentary about the NYC Downlow, Meat Rack, was exhibited online via Block9 from 23-30th June 2020 to mark the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury Festival. It was selected as part of The Observer’s Guide to Summer Culture and covered widely in other publications including Crack, Resident Advisor, and Mixmag. 

Harry has an ongoing multimedia project about dementia in the North East. It is focused on themes of intimacy, care, and memory loss. Elements of the project – including film and photography – were exhibited at a Wellcome Trust exhibition in February 2020. He is currently developing Margaret into an artist’s book about care work and hands with support from Arts Council England. 

Between 2019-2021, Harry produced a number of short documentaries with Mundial Studio, with a particular emphasis on the role of community in grassroots football. This included a series of films about the history of The FA Cup with The FA and Mitre and various short films about lower league football. In April 2022 Harry was invited to be artist-in-residence at Jupiter Woods in South Bermondsey. This was the catalyst for a 3-screen installation about Millwall Football Club and its role in the community, set to be exhibited in late 2022.

As Film Director on Identifying The Displaced, Harry is responsible for capturing key moments as the project unfolds. Working in collaboration with charities, NGOs and humanitarian organisations, the project’s film component seeks to further the impact of Identifying The Displaced. The first iteration of Harry’s film paints a picture of daily life at the forensic lab in Alexandroupoli and utilises real-life, smart phone recordings taken by migrants on their journeys in between Turkey and Greece. Relying heavily on testimony from migrant communities in Athens, the film resurrects stories from individuals whose voices are often absent from the discussion. The film is set for a release in October 2022.