Rate My Professor Hallie Buckley

Professor Hallie Buckley is a distinguished bioarchaeologist and Professor in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago's Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Health Sciences Division. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Auckland, a Postgraduate Diploma in Science, and a PhD from the University of Otago, completed in 2001 with a thesis titled 'Health and disease in the prehistoric Pacific Islands.' Buckley joined the University of Otago faculty after her doctorate and was appointed full professor in 2017, delivering her Inaugural Professorial Lecture on 'Evolutionary medicine' that year.

Her research specializations encompass bioarchaeology of the Asia-Pacific region, health and disease patterns, and forensic anthropology. Buckley has directed major projects including the analysis of human remains from the Teouma Lapita site in Vanuatu, contributing to understandings of early Pacific settlement, and bioarchaeological studies of 19th-century Otago sites such as St John's Cemetery in Tokoiti, the Chinese cemetery in Lawrence, and Drybread Cemetery in Central Otago. She received the James Cook Research Fellowship in 2019 for her project 'Lost lives, forgotten voices: Rediscovering the microhistories of 19th century miners and settlers through bioarchaeology,' which examines skeletal remains from gold mining contexts to reveal individual osteobiographies and involves community consultations with descendants, iwi, and Chinese groups. Awards include the Mason Durie Medal from Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2022 for advancing the biomedical history of Polynesian ancestors and ancient disease discoveries in Asia, and election as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2022. Key publications feature 'Mass Migration and the Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand' (Journal of World Prehistory, 2017), 'The Prehistoric Peopling of Southeast Asia' (Science, 2018), 'Ancient Genomes Document Multiple Waves of Migration in Southeast Asian Prehistory' (Science, 2018), and co-editorship of The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands (2016). Her innovative use of chemical, isotopic, and DNA analyses on archaeological remains has significantly shaped knowledge of past migrations, population dynamics, and health in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.