PROFILE
She started her career as a junior doctor before becoming bewitched by old bones and subterranean mysteries. Digging For Britain presenter Professor Alice Roberts on why she will always have one foot in the grave…
Complex science and ancient history is Professor Alice Roberts’s speciality; making it accessible and relevant for the rest of us is her superpower. For two decades, the Nirvana-loving anatomist, anthropologist and paleopathologist has created compelling TV and several bestselling books from her arcane academic passions. Today, though, her focus is on shoelaces. Specifically, how to tie them. “Someone on Twitter told me that I was tying the laces on my walking boots all wrong. I tried to ignore them but it niggled me, so eventually I gave it a go. Annoyingly, they were right,” she laughs. Follow Alice down a social-media rabbit hole and you’ll find a world of walking boot-lacing theories, including her own revised method: a reef knot and a free-spirited, top-down approach to lace hooks. This is classic Alice Roberts. Aspiking of curiosity followed by rigorous evidence-gathering, an enthusiastic sharing of insight and a dash of nonconformity.
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
Alice’s latest book, Crypt, is a case in point. The final instalment in a trilogy unlocking secrets from buried bones, the book opens with Alice ruminating on a bunch of skeletons exhumed from a pit in Oxford. Sifting through evidence for the theory that they belonged to Danes brutally killed on the orders of King Æthelred in 1002, she isn’t afraid to reveal an emotional response. Reading about the moment she held one of the skulls, you share her sense of horror as she is suddenly confronted – and connected – with the violence it suffered.
NDERGROUND
This instinct for forensically assessing information from different perspectives is the product of avaried portfolio career. Born in Bristol to an aeronautical engineer and a teacher, Alice studied medicine in Cardiff and worked as a junior doctor before becoming an anatomy demonstrator at the University of Bristol. Completing a PhD in paleopathology while there, she stayed on to become alecturer, running anatomy on the medical course and “falling into television in adelightful way”. Starting as acontributor on Channel 4’s Time Team in 2001, she progressed to presenting. In 2012, she took on her most high-profile academic role yet, as the University of Birmingham’s first Professor of Public Engagement in Science. Within ten years, she was chairing Independent SAGE’s weekly briefings, helping to communicate Covid updates to the public.
The role of science communicator is something Alice approaches in a uniquely creative way. Watch the latest series of Digging For Britain and you’ll spot her sketching. Pick up acopy of Crypt and you
