“I’m just a person who is offended by injustice and I think I can, in my small niche way, do something about it.” – Dr. Amy Michael
This week we are very excited to feature our next MSU alumna, Dr. Amy Michael. This quote perfectly encapsulates Dr. Michael’s work ethic, motivation, and all that she does for the victims she sees in her forensic anthropological casework and research. Dr. Michael an Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). Currently, she is working on pilot studies looking at skeletal and dental microstructure for how digestion affects bone in scavenging cases as well as mimicking how perpetrators obscure evidence by testing how household corrosives affect dental tissue.
Dr. Michael’s primary research and activism is focused on utilizing collaborative approaches to identify victims of cold cases. She works and learns alongside her students to embrace a new forensic approach led by the Redgrave Research Forensic Services (RRFS), a forensic genetic genealogy team that combines anthropological and forensic genetic genealogy methods. She also works closely with the UNH Hubbard Center for Genomic Studies where she and the RRFS are collaborating on several forensic-related projects. She is a founding Board Member for Trans Doe Task Force (TDTF), a grassroots activist organization led by two Trans forensic genetic genealogists, Lee Bingham Redgrave and Anthony Redgrave. The TDTF is incorporated as a non-profit and they fund cases of suspected Transgender or non-binary Does using their combined approach of anthropology and genetic genealogy.
When asked about this work, Dr. Michael states:
“The Redgraves are outstanding colleagues and very selflessly dedicated to solving identities of underserved and marginalized community members. If I had no limitations (and lots of grant money), I would do exactly what we are doing now but on a much larger scale. We currently have two active TDTF cases and are aiming for five or more solves this year. Much of this work is rooted in education, so if we had unlimited funds and support we could also develop training workshops and outreach programs for law enforcement and medical examiners who may have LGBTQ+ Does that need to be identified and are not being prioritized.”
She serves as the Director of Professional Outreach and Collaboration for TDTF and encourages anyone who wants to collaborate on projects, to email her at Amy.Michael@unh.edu.
And this type of work landed her a spot on The Fall Line podcast, where Dr. Michael discussed a cold case project that she assigns to her students. Her inspiration for this project came from students’ love of true crime and multimedia approaches. She asks her students to choose a cold case, solved or unsolved, and explore why it went cold, critically analyze the publicly available information about the case, and provide informed speculation on how/why anthropology was used or if it could have been used.
“I have gotten incredible projects from students including art pieces exploring case timelines, Twitter accounts, Forensic Files style documentary films(!), TikToks, podcasts, newspaper articles, and more. Beyond drawing on themes learned in class, students are expected to critically think about how and why certain cases are covered while others are not.”
Check out her entire two-part interview here: Episode 1 & Episode 2.
Dr. Michael received her PhD at Michigan State where Drs. Lynne Goldstein, Norm Sauer, and Gabriel Wrobel were her mentors and biggest supporters. While here at MSU, she received training in forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and historical archaeology which has been integral to her career. By having this cross-disciplinary training, through holding up to three jobs at any time throughout her tenure at MSU, she learned to be adaptable in her time and in learning new skillsets. She has been an adjunct professor, visiting assistant professor, lecturer, and is now a tenure-track professor. Her experiences at MSU and aid from her mentors have helped her be flexible in her career-trajectory in a competitive field.
Aside from her academic career at MSU, Dr. Michael loved the exceptional camaraderie between the graduate students. The unique element of the graduate students in the department is the lack of competition and all of the kindness and support that the students offer one another. She misses the McDonel basement, Sparty’s enormous diet sodas during late night study marathons, digging on campus, and being in all the labs to see what other students were working on! In the greater Lansing area, she misses the unique nature of what is known as “the Bermuda Triangle that is Frandor”. She lived in Lansing for 10 years and made some of her closest friends in the area. She misses living in the same city and visiting her favorite city, Detroit, with them. She misses being so close to Detroit and its exceptional museums, community art, markets, and book store.
When asked how she became interested in forensic anthropology, she credits a large part of it to her undergraduate biological anthropology course at the University of Iowa. Her professor, Dr. Robert Franciscus, explained how biological race does not exist. Between this concept and being mesmerized by Australopithecines, coming from a small high school that was not allowed to learn about evolution, her mind was blown. She volunteered in Dr. Franciscus’ osteology lab and realized about halfway through undergrad that while she liked paleoanthropology, she loved the idea of applying skeletal biology methods to modern humans to resolve identity and learn about life experience.
Dr. Michael has two foci in forensic anthropology: victims and her students. This focus is clear to anyone who has interacted with Dr. Michael. When it comes to her students, she says:
“I encourage my students to follow the threads of anything that interests them and to find the intersections of all these interests. I am personally interested in so much, in and outside of anthropology, that I cannot choose a cohesive or single path! I want to write about everything I see before me – so I encourage my students to embrace their varied (sometimes weird!) interests and say yes to everything that interests them during undergrad. Anthropological scholarship should be rigorous, yes, but it should also be fun… I suppose my takeaway would be: be active in your practice of anthropology and do something.”
When it comes to her own career, her work with victims and their families is key.
“Writing and publishing is of course the academic gold standard, but to me, a career in anthropology should have real world applicability too. Forensic anthropologists are uniquely suited to create demonstrable change in peoples’ lives. I was recently on the phone with a family member who now knows what happened to their loved one because I read about a case, made some calls, invested the energy in re-analysis, found funds for new work, connected the right people and got an identification. I’m never going to write an article about the case or research, but that was the most important thing I did all year.”
Dr. Michael is extremely humble, hardworking, and really puts the victims first and foremost in a field that was created in order to identify those who no longer have a voice. She advocates for the injustices that are illustrated in the disproportionate rates violence towards Trans victims and remains adamant that students are the future of this field and their voices should be amplified.
Thank you Dr. Amy Michael for sharing your insights into the field, reflections of MSU, and all of your advice to future students!
Authored by: Micayla Spiros
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