Yates to speak at Yale Culture in Crisis Workshop, UN Global Colloquium of Uni Presidents, 11 Apr

18 Mar 2016

Co-hosted by The V & A Museum and Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.

The workshop forms part of the broader series of events to be held as part of the UN Global Colloquium of University Presidents, the theme of which is “Preservation of Cultural Heritage”.

The Culture in Crisis workshop will be held from 11:00am to 4:00pm on 11 April at Yale’s West Campus. Those wishing to attend this even should email world@yale.edu for more details.

Donna’s contribution to the workshop:

Why is the past repeating itself? Towards a truly effective and efficient response to the global illicit trafficking in antiquities

Once again the looting and trafficking of cultural objects from conflict zones has caught widespread attention. Once again, researchers, professionals, stakeholders, and the general public have called on policy makers to do something about it. And once again, the plans and policies being implemented at an international level mirror the ineffective measures that have been the model for global response for nearly 50 years. Clearly our current policy framework does not work. Yet just because it is embedded, does not mean we have no other options.

In this talk I will discuss some of the weakest elements of our international policy framework for the prevention of the trafficking and sale of looted cultural objects: why they fail, what they do not address, and how they can be improved. If our goal is an effective and efficient response to the global illicit trafficking in antiquities, we will have to be brave enough to try and salvage failed policy and back bold new measures that are based on the extensive research on this topic that simply was not available to policy makers in the past.