Donna Yates
@profdonnayates
I'm the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and Emerging Crime as well as a criminologist, an archaeologist, and an unqualified dinosaur lawyer. I study passion and deviance related to rare and precious things at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University.
CALL FOR JOURNAL PAPERS: "Natural Heritage as Cultural Property: legal and social dimensions to the collection, display, and sale of natural history specimens", a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Property edited by @p-stewens.bsky.social & me. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Why would anyone pay $38,000 for a Megalodon shark tooth that they could buy now for less than $1,000? I explore answer that question in my latest publication: **Illusions of Rarity and Value in Competing Megalodon Tooth Markets** Available free and open access. doi.org/10.1007/978-...
Blog post! Performance of Security at the Drents Museum Helmet Return Press Conference www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2026/04/perf...
They "TA-DA'd" the recovered helmet! They even gave it a "drie...twee...een!" before they removed the cloth. Then there was silence followed by a slow, uncertain applause. A very "is this a clapping moment?" vibe from the attendees of the Helmet of Coțofenești press conference.
Performance of security at the press conference to announce the recovery of the stolen Helmet of Coțofenești.
Read all of antiquities dealer Michel van Rijn’s odd and amazing early blog online here. It is spectacular. #artcrime #archaeology www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2025/11/read...
Colleagues at Maastricht University. I'm running for University Council. I would truly appreciate your vote. Take a moment and vote here: elections.maastrichtuniversity.nl and if you would like to see the platform I'm running on, here: leadmaastricht.nl
Frankly I'm surprised that I didn't know about this already. Also, this is not what I am supposed to be writing about this afternoon...
I get a lot of emails asking me about opportunities in art crime/provenance/art law research. I can't send out individual emails , so I set up an email list! Once or twice a month I send out conference, job, publishing, or other opportunities. Sign up: www.anonymousswisscollector.com/opportunities
Whose writing about Megalodon teeth markets? Me me ME! Who has Megalodon teeth strewn all around her desk? ME! Sociology, folks...
"T. rex is Fierce, T. rex is Charismatic, T. rex is Litigious: Disruptive Objects in Affective Desirescapes" Check out our new FREE and open access paper. In it, our enthusiastic citation to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson made it through academic peer review: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Jobs, Events, and More: it's the Art Crime Research Opportunities List for 15 January. Extra long because it has been a while: www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2024/01/art-...
NEW FREE CASE STUDY! In 1986 an antiquities trafficker, who planned on buying weapons with the proceeds from sale Ecuadorian artefacts, was convicted of US customs violations after he was denounced by a confidential informant traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia...
Wanna read how Shawn Graham and I used knowledge graphs and AI to find what *MIGHT BE* a multi-decade crime spree across museums and continents? It's FREE: "Reputation laundering and museum collections: patterns, priorities, provenance, and hidden crime" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Art Crime Research Opportunities List (23 Nov)! Learning, networking, conferences and jobs in cultural property, art crime, provenance, & related research. Have a look: www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2023/11/art-...
Lindemann Family Returns 33 Looted Artifacts to Cambodia The family of George Lindemann, a collector and philanthropist, returned the statues after conceding that they had been looted, Cambodian officials said web.archive.org/web/20230913...
Australia: ANU returns three ancient artefacts to Italy after Italian authorities connected them to the activities of a notorious dealer who was very active in the Italian illegal antiquities trade from the 1970s to the 1990s. canberraweekly.com.au/anu-returns-...
Naranjo Stela 30: This stolen Maya sculpture was seized by US Authorities when the crate it was being smuggled in it broke open in the port of Houston. NEW CASE STUDY on the Trafficking Culture site: traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia...