In the second ADSS Work-in-Progress seminar, ACCO expert Dr Damien Huffer will present an overview of his ongoing, interdisciplinary research into the online human remains trade. The seminar will then move to Q&A and general discussion.

This presentation summarizes ongoing research occurring within the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded The Bone Trade Project. In general, this project is beginning to identify and map the online human remains trade across various social media and e-commerce platforms. As a summary presentation, Huffer will highlight key points of methods from the digital humanities and machine learning used to investigate how this collecting community functions, what we can ‘remotely’ know of their complex morals and ethics, how they negotiate a complex legal landscape, and from which populations the human remains trafficked possibly originate. He will conclude by highlighting research areas into which he hopes to collaboratively expand this work and how it is relevant in general to understanding society’s engagement with death and the dead in its most complete form.

Registration is now closed.