Dr Donna Yates, Ph.D. (D.E.)
Dr Donna Yates is an Associate Professor in the department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University. Her research is focused on the transnational illicit trade in cultural objects, art and heritage crime, and white collar crime.
Yates has recently been awarded a € 1.5 million European Research Council starting grant to study how objects influence criminal networks, with a particular focus on objects such as antiquities, fossils, and rare and collectible wildlife. She's interested in what draws people to these “criminogenic collectibles”, how they interact with them, and how these objects may inspire crimes.
Yates' digital projects include:
- Heritage and art crime
- Illicit trafficking of cultural, collectable, and rare objects
- Heritage and museum studies
- Cultural property ethics and law
- Archaeology and art, particularly of Latin America and South Asia
- Transnational Crime
- White Collar Crime
Yates has held a number of grants and awards related to researching the global trade in illicit antiquities, including funding from the European Research Council, the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, the Carnegie Trust, and The Royal Socety. She is a founding member of the Trafficking Culture research consortium. From 2012–2015 Donna held Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and a Core Fulbright Award to study the trafficking of Latin American antiquities. This project focused on the relationship between communities, governments, the law, and the operation of transnational criminal markets and to help develop regulatory mechanisms for controlling the illicit antiquities trade in that region, based on fieldwork in Bolivia, Belize, and Mexico. Her other antiquities trafficking field research includes work in Guatemala, Nepal, and Greece.
She has also conducted research in this area for the European Commission and has provided expert consultation, training, and advice to multiple governments and agencies, and relevant intergovernmental organisations.
Prior to joining the Faculty of Law at Maastricht University, Yates was a Senior Lecturer at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow.
