Mr Roland Wessling
Research Fellow in Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology/Inforce Foundation's Director of Operations
Location: Shrivenham campus
E: r.wessling@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1793 785266
Dept of Engineering and Applied Science
Current activities
Conservation of remains project in Rwanda
Delivery of training and exercising in disaster victim identification for UK police forces
Presentation of various talks and posters at the annual American Academy of Forensic Science conference
Clients
United Nations (ICTY, ICC), UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK and German Police Forces, Commonwealth War Graves Commission(CWGC), Oxford Archaeology
Background
Roland studied physics and astronomy in the early 1990s after completing his officer’s training in the German Military Police Force. He then moved on to archaeology, law and soil science at the University of Hamburg, Germany, before moving to Sheffield University, UK, graduating in archaeological sciences in 1998. He then completed his university education with a MSc in forensic archaeology at Bournemouth University, UK.
Since then, he has been working as a freelance forensic archaeologist on international atrocity crime investigations in Bosnia, Croatia, Iraq, Cyprus and France as well as working on domestic crime cases in the UK and Germany. Roland regularly participates in delivering short courses in the USA and has done similar projects in Colombia.
Most recently, Roland was one of the two Senior Archaeologists of the team that excavated 250 British and Australian Soldiers from WWI in Fromelles, France. For more information, please visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. (More Information).
Roland is also Director of Operations of the Inforce Foundation
For a long time, Roland has promoted the importance of forensic radiography in the context of forensic archaeological and anthropological investigations and has recently been made an honorary associate member of IAFR (International Association of Forensic Radiographers)
Selected publications
The Scientific Investigation of Mass Graves: Towards Protocols and Standard Operating Procedures by Margaret Cox, Ambika Flavel, Ian Hanson, Joanna Laver, and Roland Wessling
