Forensic Facial Reconstruction: Finding Mr. X

The University of Sheffield via FutureLearn

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Details

Go to class

Provider

FutureLearn
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

$54.00 Certificate Available
Duration & workload

2 weeks, 2 hours a week
Sessions

On-Demand
Level

Beginner

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Overview

Solve the mystery of the body in the bag

On Saturday 22 January 2000, two men found a small holdall, abandoned on an industrial estate in the north of Sheffield. Upon opening the bag they made a gruesome discovery. A badly decomposed body.

Who was this person? Why did they die? Where had the body been stored all of this time?

On this course from The University of Sheffield, you’ll learn alongside the experts who worked to determine the identity of Mr. X. You’ll discover the forensic science techniques that were used to identify the body and understand the circumstances surrounding their death.

This course is suitable for anyone interested in how forensic anatomy and facial reconstruction can assist police investigations. No prior qualifications in forensic science or other disciplines are required.

Students and practitioners in the fields of archaeology, anatomy, and anthropology may gain valuable insights into the use of anatomy expertise in forensic work that they can apply to their study and work in the field.

Syllabus

The story in the bones

Welcome to the course
Forensic anatomy: identifying human remains
What information can a skull reveal?: Sex
What information can a skull reveal?: Ethnicity
What information can teeth reveal?
Do we have enough to identify the body?

Reconstructing the face

When would you need a facial reconstruction?
The anatomy of the face
Reconstructing the face
Finding Mr. X: solving the case
Career and study in Forensic Anatomy and Facial Reconstruction

Taught by

Katherine Linehan

Reviews

4.8 rating, based on 434 Class Central reviews

Start your review of Forensic Facial Reconstruction: Finding Mr. X

Guganesan Ilavarasan @guganesan

This course diverges a lot from the regular Futurelearn courses I had dealt with earlier. The course has something weighing in on me in every chapter; a sense of relief, a collective sense of duty, a genuine cause. Every click of the subsequent chapters turns pages of progressive investigation of years. This course is highly supererogatory. Meanwhile, kindly check Durham's "Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology" course, which would be an excellent follow-up to this one.

https://www.change.org/p/university-of-sheffield-save-sheffield-s-archaeology-department

#SaveSheffieldAcraheology
Naser Aldhawi @Aldhawi600

Forensic Facial Reconstruction for me is quite new I learned many things about how to find the criminals or suspected murders and to investigate and the meaning of Forensic many specialists can participate, Anthropologist pathologist Anatomy and got new Idea that after death long period we can reconstruction human remains to find out the reason of the death and functionalist of many parts of the body and how to make clay for reconstruction
Rattanaktepy Ear @tepyrtn

I've enjoyed this course a lot, everything was easy to understand. I managed to learn a lot within two weeks. Thank you.
Anonymous

I signed up for this course following an email from Futurelearn and have to say that I am glad that I did. It is well paced and easy to follow and whilst it is obviously only covering the basics I feel that I have learnt a lot about the human skull…

I signed up for this course following an email from Futurelearn and have to say that I am glad that I did. It is well paced and easy to follow and whilst it is obviously only covering the basics I feel that I have learnt a lot about the human skull, muscles and how a facial reconstruction is undertaken. There is a good mix of articles and video taking you through a case of an unidentified body. There was also good interaction online between the course participants and links to other information which was also very interesting. The University has obviously spent quite a bit of time putting this together and I would certainly recommend the course to anyone with an interest in facial reconstruction from either a crime solving or archaeological perspective.
Anonymous

The course was recommended to an audience by Jennifer Rees on a tour and encouraged me to investigate a topic that I'd never previously considered before. As someone who isn't particularly interested in Science, but is into History, crime and the impact of technology on establishing a clearer understanding of our past, it was interesting to see the steps taken in a real investigation, in addition to gaining insight into more of the human anatomy. It was clear, informative and appropriate for a wide range of users. The fact that it was free was an added bonus.
Anonymous

This course was fantastic! Just the right amount of science knowledge for the academically minded and easy enough to understand for those just furthering their education. I am so excited to get an opportunity to learn about what advancements are being done in the United Kingdom in the area of Forensics!
Anonymous

Estoy muy agradecida y súper conforme con la educación que me brindaron. Espero volver al curso para tomar el examen final y obtener un certificado. Esta área de estudio me sirve para mi carrera de antropología y mi trabajo profesional.

Gracias! Gracias! Gracias!
IRYNA ASADCHA @sugarbones

I like this course so much, it was helpful, consist all basic information and reading sooo interesting. I would like to learn more actually about this topic, so only pity this course is hort: only 2 weeks long.
Alcyone Sampaio Padilha @Cyspadilha

Fantastic course. I learned many things!!!!!

Forensic Facial Reconstruction is a wonderful job. This course showed me something fantastic about the police's job. I recomend to everyone that loves investigation.
Anonymous

I enjoyed the course and found it very interesting. The quality of the presenters was impressive. One comment I have is that there was less interaction between the students and the mentor(s) than I've seen on any other course I've taken. For examp…

I enjoyed the course and found it very interesting. The quality of the presenters was impressive. One comment I have is that there was less interaction between the students and the mentor(s) than I've seen on any other course I've taken. For example, I noticed that questions were not answered (not just mine) and it was not until several sections after I asked a question that the course work pretty much answered it. Not even a response referring me to the future section. Another is not something that the course developers can do anything about and that was the number of students who didn't seem to understand that a course that concentrates on one aspect of an investigation is just that. One person in particular seemed to spend the course lauding his own experience - which did not include facial reconstruction - in crime investigation. He spoiled the course for me.
Anonymous

I found this course most interesting and informative. The presenters being fully aware of many of the student being unfamiliar with the terminology being used provided a most useful glossary. Also as knowledge of facial anatomy is vital to reconstruction,a printout clearly showing the position on the skull of each facial muscle was much appreciated.
Anonymous

I found this course really interesting and informative as it gave a real insight into what it takes to reconstruct someone's face. I liked how the individual facial muscles were highlighted in separate diagrams as it made it much clearer to understa…

I found this course really interesting and informative as it gave a real insight into what it takes to reconstruct someone's face. I liked how the individual facial muscles were highlighted in separate diagrams as it made it much clearer to understand, and the end of section quizzes were a great way to recap the information you'd just learnt. One of the only negatives is that the 'solving the case' video was a little unclear as constantly using 'he' made it difficult to know who was being talked about (either Mr X, son, or grandson) until you got further into the video which made finding out the story of the murder a little anticlimatic. The name of Mr X was also never revealed so I had to google that for myself.
Overall though I loved the course and it has definitely increased my interest in potentially pursuing a career in forensic science!
Anonymous

The whole course was extremely well taught, appropriately paced and also kept to the introductory level, which is important for beginners in this field. It was one of those online courses that you can't wait to log onto when it was time to study.
Anonymous

Fantastic course! I'm interested in CSI because of the TV series I've seen these years, so I joined this forensic course. As the name of the course suggests, I followed every steps to see how the final imagines and model were reconstructed based on a skull. From the body in a bag to the police finally arrested the killers, now I know the whole picture of facial reconstruction in this particular case. The professors and experts provided the evidence and methods in great detail which impressed me the most, thank you Sheffield!
Anonymous

Great introduction to facial reconstruction process and applications. A short course; but enough to wet your appetite for more.
Anonymous

I knew nothing about this subject when I started this course, which I did out of curiosity. I'm retired now and have been learning from these Future Learn courses for several years to keep my brain active and get knowledge of things that I know little about.
This course was so interesting and it was good to follow the case through from the beginning right to the end of result of seeing the murderers brought to justice.
Thank you to all the experts who put this course together.
Anonymous

Fascinating topic for a course and a good balance between science and context. There were a few bits that weren't so clear or had typos, but overall the course was engaging and often contained clearly expressed content. There were also some great discussion points and the ability to discuss the course with other participants online certainly enriched the course experience. A fab way to understand the real science at work compared with the tv portrayals of facial reconstruction and forensic science.
Anonymous

It is a very informative course detailing what can be achieved with this specific knowledge; it also gives an insight of what other sciences can be called upon to achieve a satisfactory end result in a case, these could be of interest to future learning also.

The two media downloads was a good ending to the 'story' of the demise of Mr X as this contained a lot of information which did not need to be included in the actual science of facial recognition but was interesting to see the whole picture.
Anonymous

I don't have a very 'scientific' brain but picked this course because it was only two weeks and I thought it wouldn't tax me too much. I found it well taught and relatively easy to understand. It made an extremely interesting introduction to the Subject and concluded with the scientific and human story being brought together - excellent
Sarah Jones

This was a really informative course. I learnt quite a few things I didn’t know. I do come from a medical background so did have some knowledge but still learnt from it and found it really interesting. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone with interest of resolving murder cases and how they find who people are