News

Trafficking Culture PhD researcher Jessica Dietzler is going to be a guest speaker at the ‘NYU-London Seminar: Art Crime Today–Fakes, Forgeries, and Stolen Art’. The course, run by New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, runs from 17th to 21st June. Jessica’s presentation, on the work of Trafficking Culture and an overview of research...

Neil Brodie is once again returning to the Cyclades to conduct archaeological survey work on the uninhabited island of Keros. This is follow-up work stemming from excavations conducted with Cambridge University’s Keros Project, which is led by Trafficking Culture friend Colin Renfrew. It is a continuation of fieldwork carried out on Keros over several seasons, including last summer.

On 30th May Suzie Thomas will give the keynote lecture at the Contactdagen voor Belgische en Nederlandse Archeologen en Bouwhistorici (BNA), an annual conference held alternately in Belgium and the Netherlands. A key issue for debate this year is that of hobbyist metal detecting and its interaction with archaeological sites, especially in light of proposed changes to legislation in the Belgian...

Trafficking Culture has been given permission to disseminate two images captured using Google Earth showing Apamea in Syria. 

Neil Brodie and Donna Yates are both speaking at the forthcoming conference, “The past for sale? New Perspectives on the Economic Entanglements of Cultural Heritage”, taking place at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Heritage and Society, May 15-17. Donna presents a paper titled “Sticks v. Stones: A Comparative Discussion of the Commericialization and...

This summer, Tess Davis will lead Tulane University law students to the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Cambodia, where they will work to study and combat the illicit antiquities trade. In recent years, looters have have decimated Cambodia’s archaeological heritage in search of buried treasures to sell on the global art market.  The trafficking of these artefacts has developed into a criminal...

Simon Mackenzie, Neil Brodie and Jessica Dietzler are all giving papers at the forthcoming conference “Vulnerability and Cultural Heritage I: heritage crime, illicit trade, stewardship and ethics“, to be held at the University of Leicester, UK, on Thursday 9th and Friday 10th May. On the 9th of May Neil talks about “Provenance and price: The invisible hand of the antiquities...

In early 2013 Belize’s Institute of Archaeology, a division of the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) launched an anti-looting campaign and were kind enough to share two of their posters with us. We are very interested in popular media campaigns against looting and look forward to sharing more examples from around the world. The posters are available in the Data section of our...

We have a new addition to our social media! In an effort to reach a wider audience of students, scholars, and the general public, we will now be sharing entries from our encyclopedia on the official Trafficking Culture Tumblr: traffickingculture.tumblr.com You can expect bi-weekly updates, as well news and reblogs of related objects and issues. If you’re on Tumblr, be sure to follow...

Neil Brodie will give a talk on the trade in looted antiquities in Liverpool on 25 April.  The talk will be at 6:30pm at Cafe 17, 17 Hatton Garden, L3 2HA. All are welcome to attend.

The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, in which Trafficking Culture is based, recommences its Working Lunch series of seminars next week. These are a regular opportunity, usually on Wednesdays between 12.30 and 2pm, at the Meeting Room, Ivy Lodge, 63 Gibson Street, Glasgow. The Working Lunches offer an opportunity to hear about and discuss current criminological research from within...

On Monday 22nd April, Suzie Thomas talks about her research for Trafficking Culture at the Nordic TAG conference, hosted by the University of Iceland, Reykjavik. In the session, ‘Behind the (Iron) Curtain: Looking back on Soviet Archaeology’, Suzie speaks last, discussing ‘The trafficking of cultural objects in post-Soviet Russia’, drawing on her recent qualitative and...

We are pleased to report that the Bolivian Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) will be serving as the host institution for the duration of Donna Yates’ Fulbright-funded field research. We believe that this will be a mutually beneficial partnership and look forward to interesting results. Donna will be conducting fieldwork on the impact of national and international...

As part of the University of Helsinki’s Chair of Archaeology Speaker Series ‘Archaeological Encounters’, Suzie Thomas is giving a public lecture on Wednesday 27th March. The abstract for her talk, titled ‘Trafficking Culture: Measuring the global traffic in cultural objects’ is: ‘Trafficking Culture’ aims to produce an evidence-based picture of the contemporary...

Suzie Thomas and Stuart Campbell, a Friend of Trafficking Culture, have co-edited a special issue of the online peer-reviewed journal Internet Archaelogy.

On 27 February 2013 in Washington, DC, Trafficking Culture Researcher Tess Davis testified before the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) at the US Department of State. Davis spoke in support of the proposed second extension of the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Government of the United States of America Concerning the Imposition of...

Neil Brodie is contributing to a day school in London on Saturday 23 March.

Trafficking Culture Research Associate Suzie Thomas is going to be in Finland for a month from this coming Monday. She will be based as a Visiting Fellow at the Department pf Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki, and as well as building links with university colleagues, she will be spending time interviewing numerous different actors that are involved in...

New Data has been added to the website, with an opportunity to hear Simon Mackenzie‘s presentation from the ‘Prevention and fight against illicit trafficking in cultural property, the national and international dimension‘ conference. The talk was delivered on 16th January 2013, and the conference was organised by the International Scientific and Advisory Council of the UN...

Trafficking Culture Researcher Tess Davis will be the main discussant at a special roundtable lunch session at Boston University Department of Archaeology on 21st February.