I’m not the sort of ‘leave them wanting more’ type of person. I’m more like the end of ‘The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’, where it just keeps on going seemingly for an eternity until the point that hurling yourself into a volcano seems like a blessing…
So with that in mind, here are some places where you can find me. Twitter is the best place, because even though it can be a right horror show, it’s a great place for breaking down barriers and sharing our work and interests. I’m also on LinkedIn, but I’m not entirely sure why…
I do a lot with the press, which is a lot of fun, and I’ve written about it a bit here. Our work examining the burned and cremated remains of people in the past has been featured in a range of non-academic publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic and Sapiens. I’ve also co-written an article for The Conversation, entitled “The human body never truly disappears – finding the remnants of a tragic end can help us uncover atrocities” which explores how forensic archaeologists and anthropologists can apply osteology to human rights investigations. I’ve followed this up with further articles in The Conversation on what happens to your body if you die in space, on what happens to your body if you die and are mummified, and what happens if you die in a volcano. As you can tell, I’m popular in dinner party situations… So far, my articles have been read over 403,000 times. That’s over 0.005% of the world population! Of course it’s not really, as about a fifth of those reads are from me…
I’ve also been privileged to be asked to write about learning and teaching in higher education too. I co-authored a reflection on the impact of the lockdown in university teaching for the leading journal Forensic Science International, and recently was asked to discuss how to maintain quality standards in digital pedagogy for the Times Higher Campus.
I am also very committed to supporting out heritage sector, and you can read a little of some of the work we’ve done with the Head of Steam museum here. You can also read a little about some of the work I’ve been supporting here at Teesside, for example in this piece when we were confirmed as a National Centre of Excellence for Interior Design and Architecture.
And should you be thinking, just what does this Tim Thompson sound like, or look like when moving his arms about, you can watch me talking about our 3D surface scanning methods here (with Dr David Errickson as part of our work with the York Archaeological Trust) or in this old interview for the Forensic Architecture project talking about forensic anthropology. I can only apologise now for my hair in this. You can also dig out a couple of episodes of the TV series Ancient Mysteries – in Stonehenge: The Final Mystery we apply our burned bone methods to this fascinating context, and in The Headless Gladiators of York we use our imaging techniques to explore what has caused the infamous bite-mark on one of the deceased.
I’m also a frequent Keynote speaker and I’ve given more public talks than I can remember.