Introducing New Member: Dr Donna Yates

In January 2020, Donna Yates joined MACCH and Maastricht University as an associate professor at the department of Criminal Law and Criminology in the Faculty of Law where she will serve as the principal investigator of the “Trafficking Transformations” project.

This project, funded for 5 years by the European Research Council, looks at the role that collectable antiquities, wildlife, and fossils play in criminal networks, using methods that combine anthropology, criminology, and heritage research. Although Donna’s educational background is in archaeology, she has spent the past 8 years at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, working on projects related to the global illicit trade in cultural objects. She is a founding member of the Trafficking Culture Research Consortium (traffickingculture.org), and has provided research, advice, and training on topics related to the antiquities trade to the European Commission, UNESCO, UNODC, the US State Department, and the WCO, among other organisations and institutions. She blogs on this topic at anonymousswisscollector.com