Alice Roberts

Alice May Roberts B.Sc., M.B., B.Ch., Ph.D.
At an archaeology rally in Oxfordshire, England, photograph September 2010
Born	1973 (age 38–39)[1] Bristol, England
Alma mater	University of Wales (B.Sc., M.B., B.Ch.) University of Bristol (Ph.D.)
Occupation	Anatomist Paleopathologist Osteoarchaeologist Anthropologist Television presenter Author
Known for	Coast The Incredible Human Journey Time Team Costing the Earth (BBC Radio 4) Digging for Britain
Title	Professor
Children	Daughter
Website
www.alice-roberts.co.uk

Alice May Roberts (born 1973^[1]) is an English anatomist, osteoarchaeologist, anthropologist, paleopathologist, television presenter, and author.

Best known for her TV appearances in the BBC series Coast, Dr Alice Roberts: Don't Die Young, and The Incredible Human Journey, she has also appeared as an expert osteoarchaeologist on the Channel 4 television series Time Team and its spin-off show Extreme Archaeology, as well as presenting the BBC series, Digging for Britain (2010).

Early life and education

Roberts was born in Bristol in 1973 and attended The Red Maids' School in Westbury-on-Trym, in the north of Bristol.^[1][2][3] She was a medical student at University of Wales College of Medicine (then part of the University of Wales, now part of Cardiff University) and qualified in 1997 as a medical doctor with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB BCh) having gained an intercalated Bachelor of Science (BSc) in anatomy.^[2][4][5]

Academic career

After graduating in 1997, Roberts worked in clinical medicine as a junior doctor with the National Health Service in South Wales for 18 months. In 1998 she left clinical medicine and worked as an anatomy demonstrator in the Anatomy Department at the University of Bristol, becoming a lecturer there in 1999.^[1][2][6] She spent more than seven years working part-time on her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in paleopathology, the study of disease in ancient human remains.^[1][2] She worked as Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol Centre for Comparative and Clinical Anatomy where her main roles were teaching clinical anatomy, embryology, and physical anthropology, as well as researching osteoarchaeology and paleopathology.^[2][4][7] She stated in 2009 that she was working towards becoming a professor of anatomy.^[8]

From August 2009 until January 2012, she was a Visiting Fellow in both the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Department of Anatomy of the University of Bristol.^[4][9][10]

In February 2012, Roberts took up a new post as the University of Birmingham's first Professor of Public Engagement in Science.^[11][12][13]

She is currently the Director of Anatomy for the National Health Service Severn Deanery Postgraduate School of Surgery, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Hull York Medical School.^[14][15]

TV career

A presenter on various science documentary programmes, Roberts first appeared on television in the Time Team Live 2001 episode,^[16] working on Anglo-Saxon burials at Breamore, Hampshire. She has since served as a bone specialist and general presenter in many episodes, including the spin-off series Extreme Archaeology. In August 2006, the Time Team special episode Big Royal Dig investigated the archaeology of Britain's royal palaces, and Roberts was one of the main presenters for this programme. She is also one of the regular co-presenters of BBC geographical and environmental series Coast.^[17]

Now a familiar face on British TV, Alice Roberts wrote and presented a BBC Two series on anatomy and health entitled Dr Alice Roberts: Don't Die Young, which screened from January 2007. More recently, she presented a five-part BBC Two series on human evolution and early human migrations entitled The Incredible Human Journey, beginning on 10 May 2009.^[18] She is now working on a second series on human migration.^[19] In September 2009, she co-presented (with Mark Hamilton) A Necessary Evil?, one-hour documentary about Burke and Hare murders.^[20] In August 2010 she presented another one-hour documentary on BBC Four, Wild Swimming, inspired by Roger Deakin’s book Waterlog.^[21] Roberts presented a six-part BBC Two series on archaeology in August–September 2010, Digging For Britain.^[22][23]

In March 2011 she presented a BBC documentary in the Horizon series entitled Are We Still Evolving?^[24] She also presented the series Origins of Us, which aired on BBC Two in October 2011, examining how the human body has adapted through seven million years of evolution.^[25] The last part of this series featured Roberts visiting the Rift Valley. She also mentioned species related to Homo sapiens, such as Homo habilis and Homo neanderthalensis. The programme mentioned how the Neanderthals might have used more sophisticated tools than was at one time believed.

Personal life

With red-brown hair in 2007

Roberts lives near Bristol with her daughter and husband,^[26] whom she met in Cardiff in 1997 when she was a medical student and he was an archaeology student.^{[1][4][8][17][27]} She is a vegetarian^[28] and not religious.^[29]

Her conspicuous dyed red hair (its precise shade varies at different times from a comparatively subtle brown with mild copper tint to bright orange) was often commented on by viewers – in more recent TV appearances her hair colour has changed to a more natural look.^[5][30] She enjoys watercolour painting, surfing, cycling, gardening and pub quizzes.^[1] She owns an old lime green Volkswagen van which has appeared in some episodes of Coast, and which she bought second-hand from Mick Aston,^[5] professor of landscape archaeology at the University of Bristol and lead archaeologist of the Time Team TV series.^[31] Roberts is an organiser of the Cheltenham Science Festival and school outreach programmes within the University of Bristol's Medical Sciences Division.^[2] In March 2007, she hosted the Bristol Medical School's charity dance show Clicendales 2007, to raise funds for the charity CLIC Sargent.^[32]

Roberts took her baby daughter with her when touring for the six-months filming of Digging for Britain.^[33]

Selected publications

Books

• Roberts, Alice (2011). Evolution The Human Story. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 1-4053-6165-4. 
• Roberts, Alice (2010). The Complete Human Body. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 1-4053-4749-X. 
• Roberts, Alice (2009). The Incredible Human Journey. Bloomsbury Publishing plc. ISBN 0-7475-9839-8. 
• Roberts, Alice (2007). Don't Die Young: An Anatomist's Guide to Your Organs and Your Health. Bloomsbury Publishing plc: London, 2007. ISBN 0-7475-9025-7. 
• Robson-Brown, Kate; Roberts, Alice M (eds.) (2007). BABAO 2004 : proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, University of Bristol. British Archaeological Reports. Oxford, England: Archaeopress. ISBN 978-1-4073-0035-1 

Scientific articles

• Brown, K. R.; Silver, I. A.; Musgrave, J. H.; Roberts, A. M. (2010). "The use of μCT technology to identify skull fracture in a case involving blunt force trauma". Forensic Science International 206 (1–3): e8–e11. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2010.06.013. PMID 20673617.  edit
• Lockwood, Alistair M.; Roberts, Alice M. (2007). "The anatomy demonstrator of the future: An examination of the role of the medically-qualified anatomy demonstrator in the context of tomorrow's doctors and modernizing medical careers". Clinical Anatomy 20 (4): 455–459. doi:10.1002/ca.20427. PMID 17072876. 

• Roberts, A. M.; Peters, T. J.; Robson Brown, K. A. (2007). "New light on old shoulders: palaeopathological patterns of arthropathy and enthesopathy in the shoulder complex". Journal of Anatomy 211 (4): 485–492. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7580.2007.00789.x. PMC 2375834. PMID 17711424. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2375834.  edit

• Roberts, Alice; Robson-Brown K., Musgrave J.H. and Leslie I. (2006). "A case of bilateral scapholunate advanced collapse in a Romano-British skeleton from Ancaster". International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 16 (3): 208–220. doi:10.1002/oa.817. ISSN 1099-1212. 

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alice Roberts

• Alice Roberts' personal website
• Alice Roberts' Facebook page
• Alice Roberts at the Internet Movie Database
• University of Bristol, Department of Anatomy
• Channel 4 – Time Team biography
• Channel 4 – Extreme Archaeology biography
• 'Alice's Inspiration' – BBC Science Week 2009 interview
• Interview with Alice Roberts for the Journal of Unlikely Science
• Journey of Mankind Genetic Map - the science behind the BBC Documentary 'The Incredible Human Journey' with Dr Alice Roberts
• Roberts interviewed by Robert Llewellyn on Carpool, 25 September 2009