Lenore Barbian, PhD

Lenore Barbian, PhD is the Director of the PennWest Honors Program as well as a forensic and biological anthropologist in the Department of Biology, Earth, and Environmental Sciences.  She earned her BA in anthropology at Northwestern University and her MA and PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

She has served as Associate Director of the Honors Program (Edinboro campus), co-director of Edinboro University’s Institute for Forensic Sciences, Anthropology Program Director, and as Interim Chair for the Department of History, Anthropology, and World Languages.  She has a record of service to the Association of Pennsylvania State Colleges and University Faculties (APSCUF) having served as the Edinboro chapter Treasurer, member of the Meet and Discuss Team, and on the Executive Council. 

Her research interests include forensic anthropology, skeletal biology, mortuary studies, and museum studies.  Dr. Barbian has provided forensic consultation for the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the Virginia State Medical Examiner, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland, and the National Disaster Medical System’s Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT) Region III. She was deployed to Somerset, Pennsylvania, to assist with the identification of the victims of United Airlines Flight 93 in September 2001, and she has helped train Thai pathologists to identify the victims of the July 2004 tsunami from skeletal remains. Prior to joining the Edinboro faculty in 2006, Dr. Barbian served as curator of the Anatomical Collections at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC and as the physical anthropologist for Cultural Resources at the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

She has published on bone healing rates, interpretation of human skeletal material from archaeological contexts, and on museum displays of human anatomy. Dr. Barbian is the 2010 winner of the Ellis R. Kerley award for research excellence in forensic anthropology and received the 2013 Best Article award from the Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences (ALHHS). 

 

Lenore Barbian also serves as a professor in the department of Biology, Earth and Environmental Sciences. 

Location: 154 Cooper Hall

Telephone: 814-732-1782