  Stellar halos of galaxies retain crucial clues to their mass assembly
history. It is in these galactic components that the remains of cannibalised
galactic building blocks are deposited. For the case of the Milky Way, the
opportunity to analyse the stellar halo's structure on a star-by-star basis in
a multi-faceted approach provides a basis from which to infer its past and
assembly history in unrivalled detail. Moreover, the insights that can be
gained about the formation of the Galaxy not only help constrain the evolution
of our Milky Way, but may also help place constraints on the formation of other
disc galaxies in the Universe. This paper includes a summary of work undertaken
during a PhD thesis aiming to make progress toward answering the most
fundamental question in the field of Galactic archaeology: "How did the Milky
Way form?" Through the effort to answer this question, we summarise new
insights into aspects of the history of assembly and evolution of our Galaxy
and measurements of the structure of various of its Galactic components.
