Phoebe Stubblefield

Phoebe Stubblefield is an American forensic anthropologist specializing in human skeletal variation, human identification, and paleopathology. She is currently the Interim Director of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida. She was formerly an associate professor at the University of North Dakota, where she also served as Chair of the Anthropology Department and Director of the Forensic Science Program. Her research integrates cultural anthropology and forensic science. She is currently leading efforts to locate and identify the remains of hundreds of victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

Education Stubblefield graduated with a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1990. Following this, she earned her M.A. at the University of Texas in 1993 and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2002. During this time, she served as the Director of the Forensic Science Program from 2003 to 2016 and as the Chair of the Anthropology Department from 2010 to 2011. In 2007, Stubblefield became a fellow of the Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Tulsa race massacre Stubblefield currently leads efforts to recover and analyze human remains associated with the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, which destroyed a flourishing Black community and left up to 300 people dead. She was a member of the original 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission created by the Oklahoma state legislature in 1997 and later disbanded in 2001. A second commission was formed ahead of the massacre's centenary in 2021. The team discovered human remains in this area through ground-penetrating radar in fall 2020. Stubblefield plans to study the bodies following their exhumation in June 2021. she still anticipates her work will lead to the creation of memorials for the victims and reveal what their last moments may have been like.