Team
Jason Felch, Director
Jason is an author, investigator and expert on the black market for looted antiquities. He spent a decade as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where his writing on the role American museums in the illicit antiquities trade was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize. In 2011 he co-authored Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum. He has continued to write about the illicit antiquities trade at ChasingAphrodite.com. Since 2014 he has directed a consulting firm that conducts open-source investigations for leading law firms, companies and NGOs. He founded the Museum of Looted Antiquities in 2024. Find him on Twitter and BlueSky or LinkedIn.
Dr. Lisa Duffy-Zeballos, Project Manager
Lisa is an art historian and provenance specialist with a Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. For over 15 years, she worked as the Art Research Director at the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), a nonprofit dedicated to the artistic, legal, and ethical issues in the visual arts. She teaches provenance research, with an emphasis on research methods, antiquities trafficking, and identifying false documentation. A specialist in Spanish and Latin American art, Lisa also directed IFAR’s Cuzco Inventory—an initiative that helped recover stolen artworks from at-risk churches in Peru. She can be found on LinkedIn.
Michela Herbert, Assistant Project Manager
Michela is a Cultural Heritage graduate student at The American University of Rome. She holds a BA in Sociology and worked in contemporary art galleries for several years, supporting local artists. Her research has ranged from economic valuations of youth heritage sites in Rome to the soft power potential of international repatriation, and her MA thesis will focus on heritage crime and provenance research. Drawing on her experience in research and as a content manager and editor, Michela's current work involves researching and analyzing the Italian antiquities trafficking network and expanding those records within MOLA. She can be found on LinkedIn.
Dr. Allison Casaly, Contributing Editor
Dr. Allison Casaly holds a Ph.D. in Anthropological Archaeology from New York University. Her research examines the forms, materials, depositional practices, and spatial patterning of personal ornaments in the Middle and Late Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland, with particular emphasis on how objects of adornment are intertwined with notions of self and community. She is especially interested in the ways artifacts carry meaning within social systems and function as repositories for shared ways of being and doing. Dr. Casaly is committed to the protection and preservation of archaeological materials, approaching them as culturally situated objects that provide vital links to past societies and enduring sources of knowledge.
Roma Aatiffi, Contributing Editor
Roma is a cultural heritage specialist focused on museum curation and 're-constructing' identity in post-conflict, particularly in Afghanistan. She holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage from the American University of Rome. Her work includes heritage documentation in ArcGis and archival research, and she has contributed to projects with institutions including the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Kabul and the American Center of Research in Amman.
Chelsea Rachelle Freeland, Contributing Editor
Chelsea is a U.S.-based archaeologist and former diplomat. She previously worked at the U.S. Department of State's Cultural Heritage Center, focusing on trafficking in Europe and Western Asia and working to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict in Yemen and Ukraine. She served as the U.S. Coordinator for the G20 and G7 Culture Ministerials from 2021 - 2024 on issues including cultural property trafficking, the effects of climate change, and copyright and intellectual property law related to intangible heritage. Chelsea holds an MA in Maritime Studies (underwater archaeology) from East Carolina University and is currently the Programs and Operations Manager for Architecture Sarasota. She can be found on LinkedIn.
Madalyn Grant, Contributing Editor
Madalyn is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and PhD candidate in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores cultural repatriation, ethical debates around collecting, and how archaeological practices and looting have shaped the field and its legacies. Before this, she worked as the Repatriation Manager at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Jun is a PhD student in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Toronto. He holds a BSc in Archaeology from Durham University and an MPhil in Egyptology from the University of Cambridge. He was previously a volunteer researcher for the British Museum's Circulating Artefacts project, and has work on public archaeology and community heritage projects in Southeast Asia. He can be found on LinkedIn.
Emily Primmer-Pyke, Contributing Editor
Emily is a cultural communications strategist, with experience working on museum and archive projects across the Middle East. She holds an MA in Arabic from the University of Edinburgh and a further MA in Arabic and Islamic Art History from SOAS. Her personal interests lie in the status of cultural heritage in conflict zones, and understandings of value when approaching reproductions of destroyed heritage.
Dr. Damien Huffer, Contributing Editor
Damien is a heritage professional and osteoarchaeologist with degrees from the University of Arizona and the Australian National University. He was a Stable Isotope Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (2014-16). During a Stockholm University postdoctoral fellowship (2017-19), he changed focus to heritage crime and the online human remains trade. He is currently a Research Fellow with the Wildlife & Environmental Crime Research Hub, School of Biological Science, University of Adelaide. His research interests now focus on overlaps between heritage crime and the illicit wildlife trade, associated conservation and biosecurity risks, legal loopholes and law enforcement needs. He is also a co-founder of The Alliance to Counter Crime Online. He can be found on Twitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Liv Siefert, Contributing Editor
Liv is an Archaeologist and Threat Intelligence Analyst from Macquarie University. She has further credentials in cybersecurity, humanitarian policy, financial risk, GEOINT/OSINT, and the military protection of cultural heritage - from the Basel Institute on Governance, UNESCO, the Peace Operations Training Institute, and Universiteit Leiden. She was the keynote speaker for the WiseArch Seminar Series, the opening presenter at the 2024 Culture in Crisis Conference for the Victoria & Albert Museum, and a 2023 presenter at NASC. In 2024, she was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship for Macquarie University, documenting military counterintelligence history in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and in 2025 is a Sir Richard Dearlove Scholar for the Cambridge Security Initiative. She can be found on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Ilaria Bortot, Contributing Editor
Ilaria holds an LLM in Art Law from the University of York and a BA in Art History and International Affairs from John Cabot University. She is specialized in cultural heritage law, restitution, and the role of cultural heritage in international diplomacy. She has worked on provenance research projects with museums and international organizations, including York Museums Trust and UNIDROIT. She has published with the Center for Art Law, the Journal of Art Crime, and IEREK Press. She can be found on Linkedln.
Emma Cudlipp, Contributing Editor
Emma is a legal professional focused on tackling transnational organized crime. With degrees in international relations, international studies and law, Emma has worked across diverse roles, including at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Over the past three years, as part of the UNODC Passenger and Cargo Control Programme, Emma has contributed to building the capacity of customs and law enforcement authorities based at key border points to deter the trafficking of illicit goods, including cultural heritage items. This role has involved fieldwork in Colombia, Ghana and the Philippines. She can be found on LinkedIn.
Julia Granato, Contributing Editor
Julia holds a master’s degree in Archaeological Science (MSc) from the University of Oxford and bachelor’s in Archaeology (BA) and evolutionary biology (BS) from the University of Rochester. With broad interests in mortuary archaeology, heritage ethics, and body politics, her research has ranged from the ethics of human remains in museums to ancient DNA analysis of human–dog co-burials. This focus on the treatment of the dead has developed into a wider engagement with the political and legal dimensions of cultural heritage, including repatriation, heritage law, and the illicit antiquities trade. Alongside her research, Julia has built a strong editorial and science communication portfolio, including roles with The Oxford Scientist, EXARC Journal, and as a Science Communication Fellow with Harvard’s American School of Prehistoric Research.
Dr. Katherine Davidson, Contributing Editor
Katherine is an anthropological archaeologist, and received her PhD in Anthropology from Carleton University. She has over a decade of experience in museum and academic work in Ontario, Quebec and abroad, including at Canada’s national museum. This has allowed her to work with hundreds of thousands of artifacts from around the world, with a focus on the Canadian Shield, Great Lakes and Hudson Bay Lowlands regions. Most recently, she has been a research assistant with the Bonetrade Project, studying the illicit trade of human remains online. Her doctoral research used an object elicitation interview method to talk about artifacts with Indigenous descendant community members in Eastern and Northern Ontario.
Contributors
Simon Dade
Ekin Berk Polat
Tai Sherman
Jacquelin Koutrodimos-Lewis
Dennis Kovtun
Ana Julia Yanase de Rezende
Sanne Rossel
Erin Kyriakopoulos
Bhavya Jain
Caitlin Chiam
Emily Rose Harris-Taylor
Kitty Perring
Carolyn Hardy
Maya Michael