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Karen Ramey Burns

Courses

Anthro 2220
Anthro 4271

Professional Activities

I teach part-time  and devote the rest of my time to practical applications of forensic anthropology. In this way, I bring a full range of experience from the working forensic anthropologist to the classroom. In the last two decades I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in all subareas of osteological analysis and human identification. I began my post-doctorate career as a forensic anthropologist in the Division of Forensic Sciences at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and I continue to work standard forensic cases on a consulting basis. I have testified as an expert witness in local, state, and international trials.

Since 1992, I have provided technical and educational assistance in regions of conflict. This includes recovering evidence and documenting war crimes in Iraq after the first Gulf War, training Guatemalan teams to identify civil war victims throughout the ‘90's, and recovering and identifying victims of Haiti's 1996 military coup. I am now working with the newly-formed Colombian forensic anthropology team, EQUITAS, based in Bogotá, Colombia. All of this work has been funded by non-governmental human rights organizations as well as national and international truth commissions.,

I am employed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DMORT and have been deployed to work in recovery and identification during national disasters such as the World Trade Center and the Tri-State Crematory, as well as natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. I teach short courses for a variety of law enforcement agencies as well as ICITAP, the U.S. Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Assistance Training Program. I have also worked in the recovery and analysis of human remains from many archaeological sites. The more fascinating excavations were in Carthage, Tunisia, including a Roman necropolis and a mass grave of Carthaginians -- an early recorded case of genocide. In addition, I am working several ongoing historic mysteries, including the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in 1937, and identification of the remains of Casimir Pulaski, a Revolutionary War hero and founder of the United States Calvary.

Education:


My undergraduate studies were in biology. Only in graduate school did my interests come to include anthropology. My graduate degrees are from the University of Florida where I studied with the late Dr. William R. Maples, founder of the C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. My major crime laboratory experience is from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Division of Forensic Sciences, where I worked in toxicology and forensic anthropology.

Major Publications

Manual de Antropologia Forense, Edicions Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, 2008.

Forensic Anthropology Training Manual (2nd edition) Prentice-Hall, Inc. 2007.

Model Protocol for Disinterment and Analysis of Skeletal Remains , IN Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions , United Nations Publication, Sales No.: E.91.IV.1, ISBN 92-1-130142-4, 1991 

The Herring Case - An Outlier, IN Hard Evidence: Case Studies in Forensic Anthropology , ed. by Dawnie Steadman, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2002.

Amelia Earhart's Shoes, Is the Mystery Solved? , by T. F. King, R.S. Jacobson, K.R. Burns, and K. Spading, Alta Mira Press, 2001. Society for American Archaeology Public Understanding of Archaeology Book Award, 2003.

Forensic Anthropology and Human Rights Issues , IN   Forensic Osteology, Advances in the Identification of Human Remains , 2 nd edition, ed. by Kathleen J. Reichs, C.C. Thomas, 1998

Forensic Anthropology, The Application of Skeletal Biology to Human Identification , ASTM Standardization News , April, 1995

Human Skeletal Remains Exhumed from Saywan Cemetery, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq , on December 27-28, 1991. IN Unquiet Graves, The Search for the Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan , a report published by Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, 1992

Professional Certification

Fellow, American Academy of Forensic Sciences

Member & Certified Forensic Consultant, American College of Forensic Examiners