Donna Yates

Donna Yates is a criminologist, archaeologist, and Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University where she holds the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and Emerging Crime. Her research considers crime relating to different forms of cultural property, antiquities trafficking, art crime, and exploitation of cultural goods markets for money laundering, white collar crime, and financial crime. and a PhD in Criminology from the University of Glasgow. Her MPhil thesis documented the sale of looted South American antiquities in auctions in the United States, and her first doctoral dissertation covered the sociology of archaeology and heritage in Bolivia. Washington Post, and The Economist. After earning her doctoral degree, Yates joined the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow. Crimes relating to palaeontological objects have become a focal point of her research ever since. Yates moved to Maastricht University where she was appointed Associate Professor of Criminology in 2020.

In March 2026, Maastricht University announced that Yates has been appointed UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and Emerging Crime. The Chair was created to foster future-oriented research that employs a wide understanding of the notions of crime and heritage and investigates new opportunities for heritage crime, new forms of heritage and their susceptibility to crime, knock-on effects of climate change and its repercussions for heritage, and uncertainty and heritage crime potential relating to developments in LLMs.

Yates has created a number of digital projects related to the illicit traffic in cultural goods, most of which are not actively maintained.

Trafficking Culture: "a research consortium that produces evidence-based research into the contemporary global trade in looted cultural objects." Property of an Anonymous Swiss Collector: a blog about "antiquities theft, art crime, and the complexities of cultural objects." Culture Crime News: "a growing database of antiquities and art crime articles from the popular press." Stolen Gods: a blog reporting on "the theft and destruction of sacred art from around the world."

Selected publications

Books

Articles

Book chapters