Forensic anthropologist. Born in Inverness, the daughter of a cabinet-maker, Black was raised on the shores of Loch Carron. She returned to Inverness aged eleven and was educated at Millburn Academy and then Inverness Royal Academy. She completed her education at the University of Aberdeen. She began her career as a lecturer in Anatomy at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. Black was appointed to the Chair of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at the University of Dundee in 2005. She has spent much of her career investigating and identifying the victims of war, in countries such as Grenada, Kosovo, Iraq and Sierra Leone, as well as those killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. She has also been involved in several high-profile criminal cases, including providing evidence to convict members of Scotland's largest paedophile ring in 2009.
Black has authored numerous books and scientific papers, but also took part in History Cold Case for BBC2. She was the subject of A Life Scientific and Desert Island Discs both for BBC Radio 4, and was identified as one of the hundred most-powerful women in Britain by Woman's Hour.
Black is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was awarded an OBE in 2001 in recognition of her work in exhuming mass-graves in Kosovo, to gather evidence against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity.
