Am 08. April haben wir, Klasse 3D/ku, die Gelegenheit gehabt Daniela Tumler kennenzulernen. Daniela ist eine Anthropologin und hat in England studiert. Sie hat uns ihre Arbeit und ihren Studiengang erklärt. Dazu hat sie uns viele Fotos von ihrem Alltag und von ihren Projekten an der Universität gezeigt.
Daniela Tumler was a student at our school. At the age of 18, in the 4th school year, she decided to do a year abroad, in Bournemouth, a city in the south of England. She went there mostly because she wanted to learn English, but ended up really enjoying herself there and making good friendships. After the Erasmus year she came back to complete her last year of high school. Daniela was quite unsure about what to do later. She had many options in mind, one of those was Forensic Anthropology. She had had the opportunity to witness a post-mortem and that had sparked her interest.
After her 5th year she decided to take a break. Daniela went back to the UK, this time to Birmingham, she got herself a job and a flat. In Birmingham she went to the library a lot, it was her favourite place. There she found two books that helped her decide what to do in the future: Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape and Armand Marie Leroi’s Mutant. In the end she set her mind straight on Forensic Anthropology and found a course to attend to.
But what is Anthropology?
Thankfully Daniela explained what Anthropology actually is, because we had no clue.
She told us, Anthropology is the scientific study of humans, the cultural but also the biological aspect.
The roles of Anthropologists in forensic and archaeological are analysis of human remains, particularly in cases involving highly decomposed, fragmented, or mummified and skeletal remains, the identification of an unknown person, composition and health status of a population and information about cultural practices, social organization, and human behaviour.
Then she went on to talk about her studies and what University she had chosen.
Her main goal was Forensic Anthropology, but she decided to go to the Forensic Science course. It was interesting, but too specific, so in the end Daniela changed to Biological Anthropology at the University of Bournemouth. She studied 3 years there and visited a lot of places. Furthermore, she managed to get work at Bolzano’s Institute for Mummy Studies (Eurac Research), where she worked on Ancient DNA analysis. Daniela was really interested in the topic, but realized she did not want to do this work for the rest of her life.
This placement helped her decide her career path and so she stayed in Anthropology.
In the following year Daniela did her Master in Applied Science by Research. Half of the time she had lectures and the other half she could carry out her research, her own project. For that she decided to analyse early medieval skeletons from South Tyrol. The research was supervised by Eurac. Following her Master, she did her PhD too. In this research she analysed 226 skeletons of the biggest early medieval cemetery in South Tyrol, “Kirche im Weinberg” at Säben. Daniela talked about what she did there and showed us one specific individual she had analysed. Moreover, she explained what information she had found and how she did that.
Currently Daniela is teaching Anatomy and Physiology, Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology at Burnley College. She is also a lecturer in Forensic Anthropology at the European Forensic Institute in Malta.
In conclusion I would like to share some things Daniela said that I value and find very important, especially for students.
In the beginning Daniela told us she was very happy to tell us her story, because she herself would have loved to have this kind of experience when she was younger. She also emphasized that when choosing a career path, you should choose something that’s important for you, that you feel is right for you. That inspired me to truly find something that I want to do in the future.
