Race Matter: On the Absent Presence of Race in Forensic Identification

Final Report Summary - RACEFACEID (Race Matter: On the Absent Presence of Race in Forensic Identification)

The RaceFaceID research project is an ethnographic study of race in forensic identification, focusing on the scientific and technological practices by which unknown individuals - criminal suspects as well as deceased victims - are given a face. Although the human face is generally seen as the ultimate identifier of individuality, in practice identification requires situating this individual in a population. The projects that make up RacefaceID study this relation between the individual and the population in forensic and legal settings, and in the media, and attend to instances where population is translated into race.
Researchers within RaceFaceID ask: How do technologies of identification rely on and reiterate racial ways of understanding differences? How do different versions of "race" (e.g. based on physical appearance or ethnicity and culture) change as knowledge travels across sites? What mechanisms contribute to making race an "absent presence" - an object that hides in the routines and technologies of science, for example in genetic markers, only to surface again in discourse? In pursuing such research, we are inspired by science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, post-colonial science studies, critical legal studies, and critical race studies.
Researchers within RaceFaceID - the principal investigator Amade M'charek, three post-doctoral researchers, four PhD candidates, and junior researchers - do not study forensic technologies and practices from the outside, but engage in the everyday work of forensic scientists, police officers, border guards, and many others in detailed ethnographies. To carefully examine the relation between technologies and race, a number of contrasting projects have been developed in which identification technologies are not used for criminal investigation purposes. The method of participant observation across multiple field sites includes interviews, observation, and hands-on research, allowing team members to open the "black boxes" of science and administration (protocols, devices, statistical programmes, etc.).
RaceFaceID is committed to sharing its findings with academic peers, practitioners in the field, and members of the interested public. To date, we have published 3 special issues, some 40 peer reviewed articles (with another 15 articles and chapters; 4 books and a special issue in preparation) in leading journals and books, and have given over 100 presentations at academic conferences and workshops. The RaceFaceID team has (co-)organized 18 (international) workshops and conferences. M'charek has delivered numerous keynote addresses and guest lectures, and has made over 75 newspaper, TV and radio appearances, and exhibition contributions. A workshop on the governance of novel DNA techniques in forensics involving forensic and legal experts, policy-makers and social scientists has become a recurring think-tank about the socio-legal aspects of frontier technologies, while our seminar series "The ir/relevance of race in science and society" has sought to broaden the scope of thinking on race by soliciting interventions from scholars in the life sciences, social sciences and humanities as well as from artists. We have also curated an exhibition on the past and present of race in science to encourage a broader public conversation on race and racism.

Final Report Summary - RACEFACEID (Race Matter: On the Absent Presence of Race in Forensic Identification)

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