[1] Buckley completed her PhD at the University of Otago in 2001, with a thesis titled Health and disease in the prehistoric Pacific Islands.
[3] Buckley's research involves the chemical, bio-chemical and DNA analysis of human and animal remains.
The cemetery, holding mainly the remains of first-generation immigrants from the United Kingdom buried between 1860 and 1926, had already been extensively researched by a local community group.
Buckley's team examined remains from unmarked graves and used a range of scientific techniques to match them with historical records.
[14] In 2022, Buckley was awarded the Mason Durie Medal by the Royal Society Te Apārangi, for "transforming the way we conceptualise the biomedical history of the ancestors of modern Polynesians, and ground-breaking discoveries of ancient disease in Asia".