Janet Monge

Janet Monge is the keeper and curator of the physical anthropology section at the Penn Museum, the Associate Director and Manager of the Penn Museum Casting Program, Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Professor at Princeton University. Philadelphia Magazine named Monge "Best Museum Curator" in 2014. Monge's work covers nearly the entire spectrum of biological anthropology from paleoanthropology to forensic anthropology. Her research interests include human evolution, human skeletal biology, bioarchaeology, and life-history/paleodemography. Furthermore, she volunteers her time as an expert witness in criminal defense cases and as a forensic consultant to police. One of the most notable cases to which Monge has contributed was the analysis of the burnt remains of the MOVE-bombing victims.

Monge earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. During her PhD, she was hired to analyze the burned remains of the MOVE-bombing victims. However, she reached different conclusions about some remains' identities than the city's special commission on MOVE. Since then, she has volunteered her service on a variety of forensic cases in Philadelphia. Despite her forensic skills, Monge's main work actually focuses on several topics including the preservation and accessibility of Computed Topography (CT) datasets, traditional radiology, human dental micro-anatomy, and production and distribution of high quality fossil casts. As the Associate Director and Manager of the Casting Program, Monge oversees 3000 molds and casts representing fossils from every phase of human evolution. Her non-profit efforts ensure museums and universities around the world have access to unique specimens. She also travels around the world to mold recently excavated fossils to include in the collection. Monge has also received a $1.7 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to curate a human evolution exhibit at the Penn Museum titled "HUMAN EVOLUTION: THE FIRST 200 MILLION YEARS". The exhibit ran from 2011 to 2017 when the Penn Museum began preparing for a series of large renovations. In addition to her research at the Penn Museum, Monge continues to conduct fieldwork. She actively excavates along the Swahili cost of Kenya. Her previous fieldwork included sites in Europe and Australia.

• Monge J, Kricun M, Radovcic J, Radovcic D, Mann A, Frayer DW. Fibrous dysplasia in a 120,000+ year old Neandertal from Krapina, Croatia. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(6), Art. #e64539. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064539
• Monge, J. M., & Ruhli, F. (2015). The anatomy of the mummy: Mortuiviventes docent—When ancient mummies speak to modern doctors. The Anatomical Record, 298, 935–940.
• Thompson RC, Allam AH, Lombardi GP, Wann LS, Sutherland ML, Sutherland JD, Soliman MA, Frohlich B, Mininberg DT, Monge JM, Vallodolid CM, Cox SL, Abd El-Maksoud G, Badr I, Miyamoto MI, El-Halim Nur El-Din A, Narula J, Finch CE, Thomas GS: Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history: the Horus study of four ancient populations. Lancet. 2013, 381: 1211-1222.
• Lewis J. E. DeGusta D. Meyer M. R. Monge J. M. Mann A. E. Holloway R. L . 2011. The mismeasure of science: Stephen Jay Gould vs. Samuel George Morton on skulls and bias. PLoS Biology  9:e1001071, discussed in New York Times June 14, 2011.
• Weiner S, Monge J, Mann A (2008) Bipedalism and parturition: An evolutionary imperative for cesarean delivery? Clin Perinatol 35:469–478, ix.