Face Lab

2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Higher and Further Education: Pioneering craniofacial analysis in the forensic and digital heritage field, combining interdisciplinary education, research and knowledge exchange at the interface of art and science with a focus on individual and population facial identity, depiction and identification.

2023 Times Higher Education Award (Arts and Humanities Research Project of the Year) for project: Craniofacial Identification for Migrant Disaster Victim Identification.

2020 Selwyn Award from the Royal Photographic Society for their contribution to the project: The Quest for Ancestral Faces, Canary Islands

2019 Educate North Research Team of the Year Award.

Face Lab was part of the Exercise Magwitch team, who received a 2018 MOD Sanctuary Silver Otter and Heritage Project Award for its work in recovering the skeletons of those who died on 18th and 19th century prison ships on Rat (Burrow) Island, Portsmouth. Face Lab produced a 3D facial depiction of one of the remains.

Current collaborators include:

• National Forensic Institute Korea
• Stellenbosch University South Africa
• Ryukyus University Japan
• Granada University Spain
• University of Milan
• University of Thrace Greece
• Missing Migrants Initiative Greece
• University of Liverpool
• Dunkers Kulturhus Helsingborg
• Museum of Liverpool
• The Beacon Museum Whitehaven
• Maidstone Museum

• Face Lab staff developed and now lead a COST-funded European consortium relating to MDVI (2024)
• Standards for the prediction of facial features and crease patterns from skeletal analysis (2024)
• Guidance for juvenile age progression using digital images (2019)
• International reports on the status of deceased migrant (2021)
• Face Lab researchers contributed craniofacial expertise to the Sutherland Reburial Project (2019) led by the University of Cape Town; a multi-disciplinary international team that studied eleven, unethically procured San and Khoi individuals. Publication (2023)

• Faces of Merseyside exhibition (2016) as a part of the 7th International Conference on The Image and sought to foreground the question of confirmation bias in relation to facial images that claim to represent particular communities, in the context of a resurgence of post-Brexit interest in physiognomic judgements and discrimination.
• Convict Faces: A collaboration with social scientists from the Universities of Liverpool and Tasmania to co-curate an exhibition of convict faces, presented in Liverpool (2018) and Hobart, Tasmania (2019); these exhibitions interrogated the pseudo-science of physiognomy whilst presenting personal narratives for convicts transported from the UK to Australia in the 19th century.
• King Dinis I of Portugal (2025): national touring exhibition starting at the Monastery of Odivelas
• 15th Century Abbot, John of Wheathampstead (2022) at St. Albans Cathedral
• “Who Am I? Remembering the Dead Through Facial Reconstruction” with the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum USA
• Judith van Vlaanderen? (2025) at St Peter’s Abbey Church Ghent
• Leasowe man (2022) in the Museum of Liverpool
• From Where Do We Hail? (2017) at Bergen City Museum, Norway
• Facial depiction of St Nicolas (2014)
• The Robert the Bruce (King Robert I of Scots) project (2016) involved an interdisciplinary collaboration with a medieval historian and a statistician from the University of Glasgow and an armoury expert from the Hunterian Gallery. The team interrogated the authenticity of the replica skull housed at the Hunterian Museum and depicted the facial appearance of the King of Scots using anatomical processes along with research into whether or not the skull revealed signs of leprosy and how that disease could have presented in relation to his resilient leadership status. The 3D replica of the facial depiction is on display at the Hunterian, Glasgow. Publication I (2019), Publication II (2019), Publication III (2019).
• The Robert Burns project (2018) involved collaboration with a Scots Poet, the University of Dundee and industry partners, to present an authentic digital avatar of Robert Burns performing one of his poems, “To a Mouse”. A motion was lodged to the Scottish Parliament (29 Jan 2018; S5M-10162) to congratulate the team on this project.
• King Ramesses II project (2023) involved a collaboration with the University of Cairo to depict the face of the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh from clinical imaging data of his preserved mummy. Publication (2023), Publication (2024).
• The Voice for Richard III project (2024) first world premier in the York Theatre Royal, involved a multidisciplinary team that applied linguistic, historical, vocal and anatomical research to digital art and performance transfer to create an authentic 4D digital portrait of a medieval king using his own words, his most likely accent and original pronunciation. Publication (2024).
• The Colombia Masked Skull project (2025) presented facial representation of a native population from the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia, cal 1216 to 1797 AD. Supported by British Academy funding, this project was through collaboration with Dr Felipe Cárdenas-Arroyo, first presented at the XI World Congress on Mummy Studies, 11 to 15 August 2025.