At the age of 13, Hagelberg's father escaped from Nazi Germany to the
United Kingdom on the
Kindertransport in 1939.[1] Hagelberg studied
biochemistry at the
University of London and earned her bachelor's degree in 1977. She moved to the
University of Cambridge for her doctoral studies, earning her PhD in 1983.[2] Traditionally, DNA could only be found in soft tissues, but Hagelberg developed techniques to recover small quantities of
DNA from bone. Once the
DNA has been extracted, it is possible to use the
polymerase chain reaction to determine the sequence of
nucleotides.[3]
Jeffreys and Hagelberg demonstrated the
DNA analysis could be used to identify the skeletal remains of a murder victim.[8] Unfortunately, the body had been in the ground for so long that it had disintegrated.[9] They could not use conventional DNA fingerprinting to analyse the DNA, and had to develop more sophisticated techniques.[9] In the 1990s she was one of the first people to use
boneDNA analysis for forensic identification.[10] Hagelberg's
DNA extraction technique was used to identify bones found in Brazil that were believed to belong to
Josef Mengele.[11] 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.[9] Their discovery closed a case of
war crime that had stayed open for half a century.[12] She also participated in the identification of remains of the
Romanov family. This involved the analysis of nine skeletons, including those of the putative Tsarina and three of her daughters, and comparing their
DNA to that of living descendants.[13] She has also used
mitochondrial DNA to study the migration of human populations.[10] She has also extracted
DNA from
mammoth bones.[14]
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.[15][16] 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.[17] Hagelberg has also written on the evolution of language, and how social complexity is related to brain size.[18] She is interested in how reliable mitochondrial DNA is in studies of
human evolution and
phylogenetics.[19][20]
She has contributed to several books, including the Oxford Companion to Archaeology and Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times: Studies in Archaeology and Bioarchaeology.[26][27] She edited a themed issue of the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on
Ancient DNA.[2]
Bibliography
Books
Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Times: Studies in Archaeology and Bioarchaeology, edited by J. Rasmus Brandt, Erika Hagelberg, Gro Bjørnstad, and Sven Ahrens (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017)
Journal articles and book chapters
Gro Bjørnstad, Erika Hagelberg, 'Analysis of DNA in skeletal material from Hierapolis', Life and Death in Asia Minor from Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times edited by J. Rasmus Brandt, Erika Hagelberg, Gro Bjørnstad, and Sven Ahrens (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017) pp. 219–27
J. R. Brandt, S. Ahrens, C. C. Wenn, E. Hagelberg, G. Bjørnstad and others, 'Liv og død i Hierapolis: Norske utgravninger i en hellenistisk-romersk-bysantinisk by i Lilleasia', Viking (Norsk archeologisk årbok) 79 (2016) pp. 193–220
Erika Hagelberg, 'Genetic affinities of the Rapanui', Skeletal Biology of the Ancient Rapa Nui, edited by G.W. Gill and V. Stefan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) pp. 182–201
J. M. B. Motti, E. Hagelberg, J. Lindo, R. Malhi, C. M. Bravi, R. A. Guichón, 'Primer genoma mitochondrial en restos humanos de la costa de Santa Cruz, Argentina', Magallania (Chile) 43 (2015) pp. 119–31
Chunxiang Li, Chang Ning, Erika Hagelberg, Hongjie Li, Yongbin Zhao, Wenying Li, Idelisi Abuduresule, Hong Zhu, Hui Zhou, 'Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from the Xiaohe cemetery: Insights into prehistoric population movements in the Tarim Basin, China', BMC Genetics (2015)
Erika Hagelberg, Michael Hofreiter, and Christine Keyser, 'Ancient DNA: the First Three Decades', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2015) pp. 1–6
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0371
Erika Hagelberg et al., 'A Genetic Perspective on the Origins and Dispersal of the Austronesians: Mitochondrial DNA Variation from Madagascar to Easter Island', Past Human Migrations in East Asia: Matching Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics, edited by Alicia Sanchez-Mazas et al. (London: Routledge, 2008)
K. W. P. Miller, J. L. Dawson, & E. Hagelberg, 'A Concordance of Nucleotide Substitutions in the First and Second Hypervariable Segments of the Human mtDNA Control Region', International Journal of Legal Medicine 109 (1996) pp. 107–13.
^
ab"Researchers". From racial typology to DNA sequencing. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
^Jeffreys, A. J.; Allen, M. J.; Hagelberg, E.; Sonnberg, A. (1992). "Identification of the skeletal remains of Josef Mengele by DNA analysis". Forensic Science International. 56 (1): 65–76.
doi:
10.1016/0379-0738(92)90148-P.
ISSN0379-0738.
PMID1398379.
^Sullivan, Kevin; Hagelberg, Erika; Evett, Ian; Tully, Gillian; Benson, Nicola; Piercy, Romelle; Kimpton, Colin; Ivanov, Pavel L.; Gill, Peter (February 1994). "Identification of the remains of the Romanov family by DNA analysis". Nature Genetics. 6 (2): 130–135.
doi:
10.1038/ng0294-130.
ISSN1546-1718.
PMID8162066.
S2CID33557869.