Hagelberg works in the analysis of ancient
DNA from
archaeological bones. She joined the
University of Oxford in 1987, where she worked at the
John Radcliffe Hospital alongside
Bryan Sykes and
Robert E. M. Hedges. At
Oxford, Hagelberg collaborated with
Alec Jeffreys on the applications of bone DNA in
forensic science. Jeffreys and Hagelberg worked on
single tandem repeat typing. Her early work included the analysis of bones from the
Mary Rose. Hagelberg identified
pig DNA in a leg bone from the food stores in the
Mary Rose. Unfortunately, the body had been in the ground for so long that it had disintegrated. They could not use conventional DNA fingerprinting to analyse the DNA, and had to develop more sophisticated techniques.
Identification of Josef Mengele remains Hagelberg's
DNA extraction technique was used to identify bones found in Brazil that were believed to belong to
Josef Mengele. With
Jeffreys, Hagelberg extracted
DNA from a skeleton that had been buried for several years, and compared it with that of
Mengele's family members.
Identification of the Romanov family remains Hagelberg played a key role in the identification of remains of the
Romanov family, the Russian imperial family, who were murdered in 1918 by the
Bolsheviks. Their bodies had been mutilated with grenades before burial to prevent identification. Nine skeletons were analysed, including those of the putative Tsarina and three of her daughters, and their
DNA was compared to that of living descendants. Hagelberg conducted the laboratory analysis, extracting, amplifying, and sequencing the bone samples, blindly and in a separate laboratory. Hagelberg removed the outer surfaces of bone fragments from the skeletons by sanding with a flap-wheel attached to a high-speed drill. The remaining bone was frozen in liquid nitrogen, ground to a fine powder, mixed with proteinase, extracted three times, centrifuged in a Centricon 30 microconcentrator, washed and centrifuged again. The DNA derived from this process was compared with blood samples from maternal relatives of the Tsar and Tsarina, supplied as a liquid or stains on cotton cloth, which were then extracted. Hagelberg extracted
DNA from
mammoth bones. She used a
molecular clock based on
cytochrome b on two Asian specimens, one from the
Taymyr Peninsula, and the other from the region of the
Allaikha River. The analysis of these Siberian samples, which were provided through the
Russian Academy of Sciences, has consequences for the taxonomy of
Mammuthus. In 1998, Hagelberg left
Cambridge and joined the
University of Otago in
New Zealand. There she continued her research on human migrations in the
Pacific Islands, by examining mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms in
Polynesian and
Melanesian bones to resolve conflicting opinions on the migratory patterns. She also investigated the genetic origins of the people of the
Andaman Islands. She found that the
Andamanese are genetically more similar to Asian as opposed to African populations, predicting they are descendants of the
Paleolithic colonies in
Southeast Asia. Hagelberg has also written on the evolution of language, and how social complexity is related to brain size. She is interested in how reliable mitochondrial DNA is in studies of
human evolution and
phylogenetics. In 2002 Hagelberg joined the
University of Oslo. Hagelberg investigates how definitions of
biological race are used by
evolutionary biologists. Her work has been covered in
The Guardian and
The New York Times. She has written several articles for
Nature, including 'DNA from Ancient Mammoth Bones' and 'DNA from Ancient Easter Islanders'. She has written several books and edited both
The Oxford Companion to Archaeology and
Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times: Studies in Archaeology and Bioarchaeology. She edited a themed issue of the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on
Ancient DNA. == Awards and honours ==