During the first year of the project a number of important milestones relating to personal training and academic development, data collection, as well as student teaching and supervision, were achieved, as outlined in more detail below. However, the fellowship had to be terminated at the end of September 2017, due to the fact that the fellow has been offered a tenured position as Assistant Professor of Bioarchaeology at the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Training: During the first year of the project, the fellow received training on three-dimensional surface scanning of human bones and dental microwear analysis at the University of Sheffield, and dental calculus microdebris analysis at the University of York. In addition, she collaborated on a project focused on the use of bone histomorphometry in age estimation led by colleagues at the University of Edinburgh. Finally, she attended a training course on Finite Element Analysis for Biosciences (Spain, July 2018).
Research/publications: During her stay in Sheffield for her training, the fellow had the opportunity to complete data collection on a research project regarding the osteobiographic study of material from central England dating from 500 to 1500 AD. She presented selected results of this project as a keynote speaker at the Hellenic Association of Biology Annual Meeting (May 2017). In addition, she published a textbook by Elsevier (Nikita E. 2017. Osteoarchaeology: A Guide to the Macroscopic Study of Human Skeletal Remains. San Diego: Academic Press), two book chapters and six papers (Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, International Journal of Legal Medicine, Journal of Hellenic Studies, Forensic Science International, HOMO-Journal of Comparative Human Biology). Regarding data collection, she has so far completed the study of approximately 300 skeletons from the cemetery at ancient Acraiphia and presented preliminary results of the project in a number of talks at the University of Sheffield (Tuesday Lunchtime Lecture Series, invited lecture to Classics graduate students, and seminar organized by the Medieval and Ancient Research Center).
Teaching: The fellow taught the module Biological Anthropology I to 28 Masters Students of the Department of Archaeology and supervised the dissertations of two MSc students. Furthermore, she has been co-supervising the dissertations of two undergraduate students from the University of Sheffield, one student from the National University at Athens and one from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
