PhD defence Pauline Dirven: Embodied performances of forensic expertise

On Friday 6 September, Pauline Dirven will defend her PhD dissertation ‘Embodied Performances of Forensic Expertise: Epistemic Virtues, Gender, and Emotions in British Forensic Culture 1920-1980’.

Forensic experts

Nowadays, it is common for scientists and medical practitioners to assist in solving crimes, as seen in television programmes like CSI, Bones, and Silent Witness. However, it was only a century ago that forensic experts were formally integrated into the British criminal justice system.

Dirven examines how this change occurred and how forensic experts carved out a position of authority and trust. She argues that historians should not only study legal, technological, and institutional developments but also how these experts present themselves, such as how they dressed and regulated their emotions.

Ideals and virtues

This dissertation analyses how forensic scientists, physicians, and pathologists acted as experts in the British criminal justice system from 1920 to 1980 and which epistemic virtues they embodied. Dirven follows historians who study scholarly personae and argues that ideals of forensic experts were influenced by gender, class, and national norms, in addition to their academic disciplines.

Specifically, this research shows that during this period, British forensic experts embodied forensic virtues such as impartiality, detachment, and objectivity by developing a masculine, bourgeois, heterosexual, stiff-upper-lipped, British persona. This influenced the examinations of victims of sexual violence and murder.