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Team

Jason Felch

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. Find him on Twitter and BlueSky or LinkedIn

Dr. Katherine Davidson

Katherine 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. She can be found on LinkedIn

Dr. Damien Huffer

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 and after a Stockholm University postdoctoral fellowship (2017-19), he changed focus to heritage crime and the online human remains trade. He is also a co-founder of The Alliance to Counter Crime Online. He can be found on Twitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.

Liv Siefert 

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

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

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

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. Lisa Duffy-Zeballos

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.