During the past couple of years, genetic genealogy has been used as an instrument for law enforcement to identify and catch criminals of unsolved cases. The method has created an ethical discussion concerning individual integrity and the potential risks an implementation of a method like this could cause. The purpose of this essay is to examine this method from an ethical perspective and discuss aspects like personal integrity, legislation and in what way people who send in their DNA to genealogy companies can affect their genetic data. Five different DNA testing genealogy companies have been selected to study and discuss in this essay. By examining their terms of conditions and privacy policies, the study will investigate how these companies act regarding the potential use from law enforcement of their DNA-databases to solve crimes. Parts of the current ethical debate regarding the method will also be presented and discussed to show potential advantages and disadvantages using a method like this could lead to. The results from the study show that forensic genetic genealogy could have both its advantages and disadvantages. Using the method has shown to be successful in capturing perpetrators behind unsolved crimes but it has also led to innocent people getting involved into criminal investigations. There are multiple ethical aspects concerning the method and the results show that there is a lack of research about the method and these aspects. There is also a lack of legislation or other forms of regulations regarding the method. The conclusion that therefore has been made is that there needs to be more research made about the ethical aspects of the method and that there needs to be more regulations to avoid the disadvantages using the method potentially could bring.

The aim of the thesis is to introduce genetic genealogy (the genealogical DNA test analyzes samples of genetic material for genealogy purposes, mostly does not serve as a tool for health diagnostics, or it does not detect genetic predisposition or disorder) and to analyze the online communities around it. The thesis answers the question of the extent to which these groups differ from groups of supporters of the traditional approach (whose main focus lies mainly in archival research). On the example of several specific communities, the author tries to show what aspects are dominant in this new kind of online activities and critically evaluate them.

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In the fifth century, after the departure of the Romans, according to tradition, which is based on the ancient written sources, Britain was invaded by the Angles and Saxons. This view has been questioned in the last century. The size of the ‘invasion’, and indeed its very existence, have come into doubt. However, this doubting school of thought does not seem to take into account all of the evidence. An interdisciplinary, nuanced approach has been taken in this thesis. Firstly, the question of Germanic raiding has been examined, with reference to the Saxon Shore defences. It is argued that these defences, in their geographical context, point to the likelihood of raiding. Then the written sources have been re-examined, as well as physical artefacts. In addition to geography, literature and archaeology (the disciplines which are most commonly used when the coming of the Angles and Saxons is investigated), linguistic and genetic data have been examined. The fields of linguistics and genetics, which have not often both been taken into consideration with previous approaches, add a number of valuable insights. This nuanced approach yields a picture of events that rules out the ‘traditional view’ in some ways, such as the idea that the Saxons exterminated the Britons altogether, but corroborates it in other ways. There was an invasion of a kind (of Angles – not Saxons), who came in comparatively small numbers, but found in Britain a society already mixed and comprising Celtic and Germanic-speaking peoples: a society implied by Caesar and Tacitus and corroborated by linguistic and genetic data.

In 2004 there was a double homicide in a Swedish town called Linköping, a small amount of DNA was found at the scene. Despite a largescale investigation, this murder would go unsolved for 16 years. In 2020 a Swedish genealogist was hired by the Swedish police and through an American commercial DNA database he was able to find the man that had gone unfound for so long. This was made possible through a change of Swedish laws in connection with the European Union’s Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a regulation that protect the integrity of the personal data of Europeans. We have investigated how the evolution of these two legal frameworks coincides with each other, making this rather paradoxical situation possible. We have also investigated how this rather invasive technology is viewed by Swedish genealogists. These websites with their immense databases, and the technological developments in DNA technology, have changed genealogy. But they have also changed the genealogist, the foremost user of the archives today. We wanted to find out how.The investigation was conducted on three analytical levels: the legal/political, the medial and the individual level. On the legal/political level the material consists of legal texts, transcribed protocols from the Swedish Riksdag, but also two different reports on the legal status of using genetic genealogy as a method of criminal investigation. On the medial level the material consists of commercials for genealogy databases, documentaries and talk shows concerning the investigation of the murder in Linköping. On the individual level the material consists of surveys and interviews with genealogists. Follow us as we alongside police and genetic genealogists follow the bloodlines running through the archives. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.

Direct-to-consumer genomics (DTCG) health testing offers great promise to humanity, however to date adoption has lagged as a result of consumer awareness, understanding, and previous government regulations restricting DTCG companies from providing information on an individual's genetic predispositions. But in 2017 the broader DTCG market which also includes genealogical testing demonstrated exponential growth, implying that DTCG is starting to diffuse as an innovation. To better understand the sociocultural forces affecting diffusion, adoption, and satisfaction, qualitative ethnographic research was conducted with DTCG genealogy and health consumers. The data was qualitatively analyzed using thematic analysis to understand the similarities and differences in beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and mediating factors that have influenced consumers. Design anthropology theory and methods were used to produce ethnographically informed insights. The insights were then translated into actionable product management and business strategy recommendations.