Brenna Hassett

Brenna Hassett is a biological anthropologist whose career has taken her around the globe, researching the past using the clues left behind in human remains. She has a PhD from University College London, where she is currently a researcher,and is also a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London. Brenna specialises in using clues from the human skeleton to understand how people lived and died in the past. Her research focuses on the evidence of health and growth locked into teeth to investigate how children grew (or didn’t) across the world and across time.

Her first book– Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, published by Bloomsbury – was well received by critics at the LA Times, the Guardian, and The Times, which named it one of the top 10 science books of the year. She followed this up with Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood in 2022.

Brenna is a founding member of the TrowelBlazers Project, dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in the digging sciences.