DEEN
Dipl.-Biol. Bastian J. Hirthammer
Forensic Anthropology

Professional profile

Profile and qualifications

Dipl.-Biol. Bastian J. Hirthammer has worked as a court-appointed expert in forensic anthropology since 2002 and has been in independent practice in Berlin since 2006.

The central fields are forensic image comparison, age estimation, and morphological ageing. This page situates court-related practice, qualifications, and professional context and refers to the corresponding specialist pages for methodological detail.

The expert work thus rests not on court-related practice alone, but also on continuous professional training, publication activity, and the methodological reflection of forensic-anthropological questions.

Practice Expert witness practice since 2002 · independent office since 2006
Professional Context AGIB · AGFAD · DGGG
Focus areas Forensic image comparison · Age estimation · Morphological Ageing

Profile and qualifications · Professional integration

Professional memberships

Professional integration is shaped in particular by the AGIB – Working Group for Identification from Images, the AGFAD – Working Group on Forensic Age Diagnostics of the German Society of Legal Medicine, and the DGGG – German Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Section I. These memberships indicate the professional contexts in which casework, methodological questions, and scientific exchange are situated.

The concrete points of reference are brought together below in the section “Verifiable reference points”.

Profile and qualifications · Fields of work

Focus areas

The central fields are morphological forensic image comparison in court-related administrative offence and criminal proceedings, forensic age estimation at legally relevant age thresholds, and morphological ageing with its age-related feature changes. This is complemented by work on the 3D quantification of human morphological structures and on standardised comparison images. These focal areas connect practical expert work with scientific activity and explain why publications, casework, and methodological contributions on the website are closely related to one another.

Profile and qualifications · Verifiable points of reference

Verifiable reference points

The present practice rests on a long professional continuity: expert witness practice since 2002, independent office in Berlin since 2006, AGIB membership as a scientific expert since 2008, and annual AGFAD certification since 2009. In addition, there is independent specialist work on forensic image comparison, age estimation, and morphological ageing. These points are intended to make clear the professional and temporal basis on which the current work rests.

On procedure

For an initial enquiry, the type of proceedings, the evidential question, and the current state of the material are usually sufficient. From this it can often already be derived whether a preliminary review, technical visualisation, or a more extensive expert examination is appropriate.

Profile and qualifications · Scientific background

Publications

A complete overview of the publications, book chapters, and selected specialist contributions is available on the dedicated publications page. The material is compiled there in a more coherent bibliographic form.