Damien Huffer

Damien Huffer

School of Biological Sciences

Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) - email supervisor to discuss availability.

I am a heritage professional and osteoarchaeologist with degrees from the University of Arizona and the Australian National University. I was a Stable Isotope Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (2014-16), during which I applied cutting-edge isotope biogeochemistry techniques to questions about the ancient human past, as well as contributed to museum and law enforcement sector collaborations around antiquities trafficking cases. While a Stockholm University postdoctoral fellow (2017-19), I changed focus officially to heritage crime and interdisciplinary research into today's online human remains trade. From January 2025, I have held a Research Fellow position with the Wildlife Crime Research Hub, School of Biological Science. This is allowing me to expand my research interests to the overlap between heritage crime and the illicit wildlife trade, associated conservation and biosecurity risks, legal loopholes and law enforcement needs.

I am a heritage professional and osteoarchaeologist with degrees from the University of Arizona and the Australian National University. I was a Stable Isotope Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (2014-16), during which I applied cutting-edge isotope biogeochemistry techniques to questions about the ancient human past, as well as contributed to museum and law enforcement sector collaborations around antiquities trafficking cases. While a Stockholm University postdoctoral fellow (2017-19), I changed focus officially to heritage crime and interdisciplinary research into today's online human remains trade. From January 2025, I have held a Research Fellow position with the Wildlife Crime Research Hub, School of Biological Science. This is allowing me to expand my research interests to the overlap between heritage crime and the illicit wildlife trade, associated conservation and biosecurity risks, legal loopholes and law enforcement needs.

  • Appointments
    Date Position Institution name
    2025 - ongoing Research Fellow University of Adelaide
    2024 - 2025 Archaeologist Australian Heritage Services
    2023 - 2023 Senior Archaeologist Converge Heritage + Community
    2021 - 2021 Senior Research Assistant Queensland University of Technology
    2021 - 2021 Project Officer University of Queensland
    2019 - 2019 Visiting Researcher Ethnography Museum
    2017 - 2019 Postdoctoral Research Fellow Stockholm University
    2014 - 2016 Postdoctoral Research Fellow National Museum of Natural History
    2012 - 2014 Visiting Researcher University of Sydney

  • Language Competencies
    Language Competency
    English Can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review
    Spanish - Latin American Can read, speak and understand spoken
    Swedish Can read and understand spoken
    Vietnamese Can read, write, speak and understand spoken

  • Education
    Date Institution name Country Title
    2008 - 2013 Australian National University Australia PhD
    2003 - 2005 Australian National University Australia MA (1st class)
    2000 - 2003 University of Arizona United States BA (cum laude)

  • Research Interests
    International Trade Law Cultural heritage management (incl. world heritage) Internet, digital and social media Criminology Wildlife and Habitat Management Forensic science and management

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2025 Stantis, C., Schaefer, B. J., Correia, M. A., Alaica, A. K., Huffer, D., Plomp, E., . . . Kendall, E. J. (2025). Ethics and applications of isotope analysis in archaeology. American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 186(1), 17 pages.
    DOI Scopus6 WoS8 Europe PMC4
    2025 Squires, K., Birch, W., Goold-Jones, G., Huffer, D., Mant, M., Mills, S. H., . . . Biers, T. (2025). To Sell or Not to Sell: The British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology’s Position on the Trade and Sales of Human Remains in the UK. Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 19 pages.
    DOI
    2024 Davidson, K., Graham, S., & Huffer, D. (2024). A Protocol for When Social Media Goes Private: Studying archaeological or heritage discourses in closed Facebook groups. Internet Archaeology, (67).
    DOI Scopus1
    2024 Huffer, D. (2024). Buy One Get One: The Legal and Socio-Cultural Context of 'Gifting' Within the Australian Human Remains Trade. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 7(1), 115-125.
    DOI Scopus1
    2022 Huffer, D. (2022). The osteology and provenance of a portion of the Parkinson collection, Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain, c. 1897. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 32(1), 156-169.
    DOI
    2022 Graham, S., Huffer, D., & Simons, J. (2022). When TikTok Discovered the Human Remains Trade: A Case Study. Open Archaeology, 8(1), 196-219.
    DOI Scopus11 WoS5
    2021 Huffer, D. (2021). Human and faunal stable and radiogenic isotope data from four Bahraini and three Jordanian assemblages c. 5300 B.C. to 1500 AD. Data in Brief, 39, 107601.
    DOI
    2021 Okumura, M., Huffer, D., & Eggers, S. (2021). Shuar and Munduruku modified remains: Bioarchaeological practice and postcolonial critique in South America. Boletin De Arqueologia Pucp, 2021(30), 145-155.
    DOI Scopus1
    2021 Oxenham, M. F., Hiep, T. H., Matsumura, H., Domett, K., Huffer, D., Crozier, R., . . . McFadden, C. (2021). Identity and community structure in Neolithic man bac, northern Vietnam. Archaeological Research in Asia, 26, 13 pages.
    DOI Scopus7 WoS4
    2020 Graham, S., & Huffer, D. (2020). Reproducibility, replicability, and revisiting the insta-dead and the human remains trade. Obradoiro De Historia Moderna, (6).
    DOI Scopus7
    2020 Graham, S., Huffer, D., & Blackadar, J. (2020). Towards a digital sensorial archaeology as an experiment in distant viewing of the trade in human remains on instagram. Heritage, 3(2), 208-227.
    DOI Scopus12 WoS5
    2020 Graham, S., Lane, A., Huffer, D., & Angourakis, A. (2020). Towards a method for discerning sources of supply within the human remains trade via patterns of visual dissimilarity and computer vision. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 3(1), 253-268.
    DOI Scopus6
    2018 Halcrow, S. E., Killgrove, K., Robbins Schug, G., Knapp, M., Huffer, D., Arriaza, B., . . . Gunter, J. (2018). On engagement with anthropology: A critical evaluation of skeletal and developmental abnormalities in the Atacama preterm baby and issues of forensic and bioarchaeological research ethics. Response to Bhattacharya et al. “Whole-genome sequencing of Atacama skeleton shows novel mutations linked with dysplasia” in Genome Research, 2018, 28: 423–431. Doi: 10.1101/gr.223693.117. International Journal of Paleopathology, 22, 97-100.
    DOI Scopus10 WoS3 Europe PMC2
    2018 Huffer, D., & Graham, S. (2018). Fleshing out the bones: Studying the human remains trade with tensorflow and inception. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 1(1), 55-63.
    DOI Scopus20
    2018 Huffer, D. (2018). The Living and the Dead Entwined in Virtual Space. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6(3), 267-273.
    DOI Scopus9 WoS5
    2017 Huffer, D., & Graham, S. (2017). The rhetoric of the human remains trade on Instagram. Internet Archaeology, 45(45), 1-31.
    DOI Scopus29
    2015 Huffer, D., Chappell, D., Dzung, L. T. M., & Nguyễn, H. L. (2015). From the Ground, Up: The Looting of Vưườn Chuối within the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian Antiquities Trade. Public Archaeology, 14(4), 224-239.
    DOI Scopus6 WoS3
    2015 Huffer, D., & Oxenham, M. (2015). How much life do I lose from the plague? Educational board games as teaching tools in archaeology and ancient history courses. Public Archaeology, 14(2), 81-91.
    DOI Scopus2
    2014 Huffer, D., & Chappell, D. (2014). The mainly nameless and faceless dead: an exploratory study of the illicit traffic in archaeological and ethnographic human remains. Crime Law and Social Change, 62(2), 131-153.
    DOI Scopus25 WoS12
    2009 Oxenham, M. F., Tilley, L., Matsumura, H., Nguyen, L. C., Nguyen, K. T., Nguyen, K. D., . . . Huffer, D. (2009). Paralysis and severe disability requiring intensive care in Neolithic Asia. Anthropological Science, 117(2), 107-112.
    DOI Scopus41 WoS36
    2008 Matsumura, H., Oxenham, M. F., Dodo, Y., Domett, K., Thuy, N. K., Cuong, N. L., . . . Yamagata, M. (2008). Morphometric affinity of the late Neolithic human remains from Man Bac, Ninh Binh Province, Vietnam: Key skeletons with which to debate the two layer hypothesis. Anthropological Science, 116(2), 135-148.
    DOI Scopus35 WoS27
    2008 Oxenham, M., Matsumura, H., Domett, K., Thuy, N. K., Dung, N. K., Cuong, N. L., . . . Muller, S. (2008). Health and the experience of childhood in late Neolithic Viet Nam. Asian Perspectives, 47(2), 190-209.
    Scopus32
    - Huffer, D., Wood, C., & Graham, S. (2019). What the Machine Saw: some questions on the ethics of computer vision and machine learning to investigate human remains trafficking. Internet Archaeology.
    DOI

  • Books
    Year Citation
    2026 Huffer, D., & Handby, E. (Eds.) (2026). Investigating Online Heritage Crime:
    New Directions, New Technologies, Emerging Markets (1st ed.). Brooklyn, New York: Berghahn Books.
    DOI
    2023 Huffer, D., & Graham, S. (2023). These Were People Once: The Online Trade in Human Remains and Why It Matters. Berghahn Books.
    DOI Scopus7

  • Book Chapters
    Year Citation
    2025 Huffer, D., Márquez-Grant, N., Ruiz, E., Cristóbal, C. A., Cabellos, T., Dorado, E., . . . Ignacio de Miguel Moro, J. (2025). The Human Remains Trade in Spain. In P. M. Barone, & W. J. M. Groen (Eds.), Forensic Archaeology and New Multidisciplinary Approaches Topics Discussed During the 2018-2023 European Meetings on Forensic Archaeology (EMFA) (1st ed., pp. 253-265). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
    2024 McKenney, C., Simons, J., Huffer, D., & Graham, S. (2024). DIGITAL IDENTITIES: Memes and Engagements with Human Remains on Instagram. In L. J. Richardson, A. Reinhard, & N. Smith (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and the Media in the 21St Century (pp. 242-256). Routledge.
    DOI
    2023 Graham, S., & Huffer, D. (2023). THE ANTIQUITIES TRADE AND DIGITAL NETWORKS: Or, The Supercharging Effect of Social Media on the Rise of the Amateur Antiquities Trader. In T. Brughmans, B. J. Mills, J. Munson, & M. A. Peeples (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Network Research (pp. 528-541). Oxford University Press.
    DOI
    2022 Huffer, D., Bentley, R. A., & Oxenham, M. F. (2022). COMMUNITY AND KINSHIP DURING THE TRANSITION TO AGRICULTURE IN NORTHERN VIETNAM. In C. F. W. Higham, & N. C. Kim (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia (pp. 272-298). Oxford University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2021 Davidson, K., Graham, S., & Huffer, D. (2021). Exploring Taste Formation and Performance in the Illicit Trade of Human Remains on Instagram. In C. Rausch (Ed.), Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market (Vol. 1, pp. 29-44). Springer International Publishing.
    DOI Scopus4
    2020 Huffer, D., & Charlton, N. (2020). Serious Enquiries Only, Please: Ethical Issues Raised by the Online Human Remains Trade. In Y. Ghalem (Ed.), Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology (pp. 95-129). Springer International Publishing.
    DOI Scopus14
    2019 Huffer, D., Chappell, D., Charlton, N., & Spatola, B. F. (2019). Bones of Contention: The Online Trade in Archaeological, Ethnographic and Anatomical Human Remains on Social Media Platforms. In Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime (pp. 527-556). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
    DOI Scopus12
    2016 Huffer, D., & Oxenham, M. (2016). Investigating activity and mobility patterns during the mid-holocene in northern Vietnam. In M. Oxenham, & H. Buckley (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands (pp. 110-136). Routledge.
    DOI Scopus8
    2016 Chappell, D., & Huffer, D. (2016). Protecting Cultural Heritage: A Review of Some Contemporary Developments in Australia and Near Environs. In Contemporary Perspectives on the Detection Investigation and Prosecution of Art Crime Australasian European and North American Perspectives (pp. 237-254). Routledge.
    DOI
    2015 Huffer, D., & Chappell, D. (2015). Local and international illicit traffic in Vietnamese cultural property: A preliminary investigation. In Heritage and Identity (Vol. 3, pp. 263-291). BRILL.
    DOI Scopus1
    2014 Chappell, D., & Huffer, D. (2014). Protecting cultural heritage: A review of some contemporary developments in Australia and near environs. In Contemporary Perspectives on the Detection Investigation and Prosecution of Art Crime Australasian European and North American Perspectives (pp. 237-254).
    Scopus5

  • Conference Papers
    Year Citation
    2025 Stantis, C., Schaefer, B., Correia, M. A., Alaica, A., Huffer, D., Plomp, E., . . . Kendall, E. (2025). Ethics and Applications of Isotope Analysis in Archaeology. In AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 186 (pp. 158). WILEY.
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