Interview with Heidi Dawson-Hobbis: Royal Mortuary Chests

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Heidi Dawson-Hobbis on her work on the mortuary chests at Winchester Cathedral. We discuss the history of the mortuary chests, the challenges of identifying which bones belonged to and the only woman whose bones were in the chests--the fascinating queen Emma of Normandy.Guest Bio: Dr Heidi Dawson-Hobbis is a senior lecturer in Biological Anthropology at the University of Winchester and a specialist in working with human skeletal remains. She has been a researcher on the Winchester Cathedral mortuary chests project since 2012 and contributed to the Kings & Scribes exhibition at the Cathedral which opened in 2019. She is currently in the process of writing the project up for publication. Previous projects involve research on medieval children published as a book in 2014 titled Unearthing late medieval children: health, status and burial practice on southern England and she is also currently working on a 19th century cemetery population from Bristol with a book chapter published in 2024: Uncovering the lives of late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century inhabitants of Bristol through osteoarchaeological and documentary analysis in: The material body.Find out more/Follow Heidi on social media:Winchester Cathedral | Mortuary ChestsHeidi Dawson-Hobbis | LinkedInHeidi Dawson-Hobbis (@ofbonesandearth.bsky.social) — Bluesky