It was a busy September for me this year. I kicked it off with our first TB-Omics project workshop, which brought together all the project collaborators to talk about what we want to do on the project and how we want to do it. As part of this, I gave a talk on the osteoarchaeological indicators of TB we have traditionally used in palaeopathology, as well as more recent developments. As part of the project, we are hoping we can determine which osteoarchaeological skeletal indicators of TB can be more or less reliable by using a new metabolomic method for identifying individuals who suffered from TB. The results could help us track more effectively the prevalence of TB through time in Britain!

After this, I attended the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology 27th Annual Conference, held this year in Loughborough. On the Saturday I chaired a wonderful session titled 'From cradle to grave' and on Sunday I presented a talk titled 'Exploring the hypothetical burden of smoking-related respiratory disease in post-medieval rural and urban England'. I had a fantastic time catching up with all my wonderful colleagues in Britain and beyond and came away feeling very inspired!

Straight after the conference, I made a two-week research visit to the School of Archaeology at UCD. I had the pleasure of working with world-leading specialist Dr Anita Radini, Assistant Professor at UCD, to analyse the micro-remains trapped inside mineralised human dental plaque, which offers a fascinating window into the types of things past people were eating and breathing in. As part of my work on the TB-Omics Project at the University of Leicester, I'm interested in identifying respiratory irritants that past people may have breathed in during everyday work that might have predisposed them to developing tuberculosis. I was looking at both Roman and Victorian individuals who have been identified as having tuberculosis, with some very interesting results! More to come on this in the future!

Finally, I picked up some extra work doing some osteoarchaeological analysis of a non-conformist post-medieval Baptist burial ground from a little village called Sutton Bonington, near Loughborough. Although a small cemetery, we have already found some very interesting results!