Rate My Professor Cris Hughes

Cris Hughes is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2010), an M.A. from the same institution (2007), and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Florida (2004). Her career trajectory includes serving as a Forensic Anthropologist at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner in Tucson, Arizona from 2005 to 2010, where she specialized in unidentified persons investigations from the U.S.-Mexico border. Upon relocating to Illinois, she held postdoctoral researcher and visiting professor positions at UIUC from 2011 to 2014, lecturer roles at UIUC and Parkland College in 2011, and advanced to Clinical Assistant Professor in 2014, continuing in faculty roles. Since 2013, she has been Deputy Forensic Anthropologist for the Champaign County Coroner’s Office, consulting with coroners statewide on human skeletal remains. Additionally, she directs the Investigative Technology Exchange at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, partnering with the Illinois State Police to advance forensic science, including forensic investigative genetic genealogy. Appointed to the Illinois Forensic Science Commission in 2023, she is a board-certified forensic anthropologist and Outreach Affiliate at the Institute.

Hughes specializes in forensic anthropology, with research interests encompassing the use and limitations of ancestry estimations from skeletal variation, reliability measures for biological profile estimation methods, and identification disparities in missing and unidentified persons cases. Her scholarship has attracted significant funding, including a Department of Justice grant ($267,117, 2019–2021) for developing the Forensic Anthropology Database for Assessing Methods Accuracy (FADAMA), a UIUC Interdisciplinary Innovation Initiative grant ($189,000, 2012–2014), and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2005–2007). Key publications include "Considerations for age estimation accuracy: Method‐derived outcomes and practitioner interpretations" (Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2024, co-authored with Yim and Juarez), "Investigating identification disparities in forensic anthropology casework" (PLoS ONE, 2023), "Forensic Anthropology Casework Performance: Assessing Accuracy and Trends for Biological Profile Estimates" (Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2021, with Juarez and Yim), "Temporal Patterns of Mexican Migrant Ancestry: Implications for Identifications" (American Anthropologist, 2017), and a chapter on intimate partner violence in Broken Bones (2nd ed., 2013). She contributes to editorial and standards boards, including the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Anthropology Section Standards Board (since 2016), reviews for journals like PLOS Genetics and Human Biology, and serves on advisory boards for police training institutes and human rights organizations. Her work influences forensic practices by improving method accuracy and addressing equity in investigations.