News

Stumbling Towards Repatriation: We need to make it clear to our museums that we do not want to walk around in galleries of stolen artworks by Erin L. Thompson and Emiline Smith has been published on Hyperallergic. Read the full article here: https://hyperallergic.com/628195/stumbling-towards-repatriation/

Dr Donna Yates will be speaking at virtual Study Forum (6 Feb) organised by Institute of Art & Law. This forum will provide an opportunity to hear about some of the fascinating issues and recent developments in the art and cultural heritage law field. Topics discussed will include: Art contracts, Copyright, Looting and art theft, Brexit/ EU-UK Trade Agreement, Cultural property. The price...

Dr Donna Yates and Dr Pierre Losson are presenting at a conference “Global Provenance” organised by the University of Bern, the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève, the Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel and the Palais de Rumine. The conference will take place over multiple days, Dr Yates and Dr Losson will speaking on 2 February. Their talk is titled...

Dr Donna Yates and Brieanah Gouveia of King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center will be speaking at a 2-day international online conference (28 and 29 January) organised by Leiden University. Donna Yates and Brieanah Gouveia will be giving talk titled ‘Provenance narratives of colonial exploitation as value enhancers on the Oceanic art market’. This interdisciplinary conference...

Dr Donna Yates is one of the people teaching at a certificate course “Art Law and Its Security Dimensions” (28th to 30th January) organised by Directorate of Extension and Distance Learning, Rashtriya Raksha University. Rashtriya Raksha University is a pioneering national security and police university of India. This 3-day course will introduce students to advance problems in Art...

Congratulations to Dr Emiline Smith who has been awarded a Scottish Funding Council GCRF grant for the project ‘Art, Feathers & Crime: New Approaches to Studying Natural and Cultural Heritage Trafficking in Indonesia’. Together with Dr Chloe Heys (Staffordshire University), Dr Tular Sudarmadi (Gadjah Mada University), Dr Adam Miller (Planet Indonesia) and Dr Panggah Ardiyansyah...

Dr Donna Yates will be speaking at a 2-day international online conference (24 and 25 Nov) organised by National Heritage Board of Latvia. Dr Yates will be giving talk titled ‘Regulating the “Grey” Antiquities Market: what works, what doesn’t and a way forward’. The event will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Prohibition and Prevention of the...

Dr Donna Yates will be speaking at a three-day online conference (16 to 18 Nov) hosted by the Federal Foreign Office in cooperation with UNESCO, the European Union and the Council of Europe. Dr Yates will be part of an expert online panel speaking on Mechanisms in fighting the trafficking in cultural property on day 2 of the conference. The full programme of the event is available...

Simon Mackenzie’s book Transnational Criminology: Trafficking and Global Criminal Markets has been published by Bristol University Press! The book is available here (including 20% discount) https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transnational-criminology This pioneering study looks across key trafficking crimes to develop a social theory of transnational criminal markets. These include human...

Contribute to our Online Conference and Edited Volume...

Dr Donna Yates and Dr Naomi Oosterman of Erasmus University Rotterdam are seeking contributions for an edited volume to be submitted for Springer’s “Studies in Art, Heritage, Law, and the Market” series.

Dr Donna Yates will be joining the V&A’s Vernon Rapley and Christie’s Dennis Ahern on a live expert online panel hosted by the Antiquities Coalition. The topic of discussion will be how the COVID-19 pandemic will effect security and crime at museums and cultural sites. The event will take place at 11am EDT on 17 June and all are invited to virtually attend. For more information...

Dr Neil Brodie will be presenting an online lecture for the Oxford Archaeological Society. The lecture, entitled “Illicit culture contact? The case of the Hobby Lobby cuneiform tablets” will be held at 16:00 BST on 2 June. Those wishing to attend the lecture online are asked to RSVP...

As part of the public conference “Violated National Heritage: Theft, Traffic & Restitution”, Dr Christos Tsirogiannis will be speaking about recent restitutions of cultural property to Greece. “This conference is aimed not only at students but also art world and museum professionals, indeed at anyone interested to hear the latest information, much of which is unpublished,...

Dr. Emiline Smith has been featured in an article in the Kathmandu Post about her work on antiquities trafficking in Nepal and Myanmar. The article is available here: https://kathmandupost.com/20/2020/03/04/everyone-i-ve-talked-to-here-has-a-story-about-art-theft (click here for archive link)

Drs Neil Brodie and Donna Yates will be speaking at a conference hosted by the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. They will discuss the results of their recent European Commission-funded report focused on the illicit trafficking of antiquities in Europe. More details about the event are available...

Join several members of Trafficking Culture on their new project, Trafficking Transformations, based at Maastricht University. This is a 3 year, full time position to assist in project research. More info here: http://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2020/02/junior-researcher-wanted-trafficking-transformations-objects-as-agents-in-transnational-criminal-networks-project.html Application deadline:...

Dr Yates has been appointed as an Associate Professor in Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Maastricht. Maastricht will serve as a base for her new European Research Council-funded research project, Trafficking Transformations. She can be reached at her new email address: d.yates@maastrichtuniversity.nl.

As part of her visit to the University of West Florida, Dr Donna Yates will be participating in the  UWF Downtown Lecture Series. Her talk is free and open to the public and will be held at the Museum of Commerce on Thursday, 21 November starting at 7pm (reception starts at 5:30). More details are available...

Dr Smith will be presenting a paper entitled “In search of excitement and sensation: participating in the global illicit cultural property trade”. More information available here: https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/asc/asc19/index.php?program_focus=view_paper&selected_paper_id=1546503&cmd=online_program_direct_link&sub_action=online_program In search of excitement...