Dr Samantha Brown, Class of 2006

Academia/Career excellence

Doctor Brown graduated from Damascus College in 2006 before completing a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology at LaTrobe University followed by Honours at the University of Melbourne. She then moved to the UK in 2014 to gain her Master’s degree in Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford. Upon being accepted into Oxford she quickly realised the cost of tuition would be beyond her means.

At this time, her family and community rallied behind her – her Mum organised a Cadbury chocolate drive, then there was a pub trivia night, a Go-Fund-Me Page, and the Sisters of Mercy awarded her a small scholarship. Doctor Brown said that people from the Damascus community contributed whenever they could, and without the huge effort of her family, particularly her Mum, she would not have been able to pursue her dreams at Oxford.

It was then at Oxford that Doctor Brown had the opportunity to study ancient proteins and to work on bones from the Denisova Cave site. She found this to be a fascinating site, where evidence has been found of human occupation in the cave going back two hundred thousand years.

As part of her Master’s project, Doctor Brown discovered a bone from an early human called Denisova 11 - nicknamed Denny. A historically important discovery, Denny provided the first conclusive evidence of human interbreeding - her mother was a Neanderthal and her father was a Denisovan. This makes Denny the only known hominin that had parents in two separate populations. Denny died around ninety thousand years ago.

In 2017, Doctor Brown moved to Germany to get her PhD from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, carrying out similar research. In 2021, Doctor Brown took a research position at the University of Tubingen in Germany. There, she runs a Laboratory studying proteins from archaeological bones, leather, eggshells, and plant remains.