The Amelia Conference – 2019: Speaker Highlights

Conference Dates – June 21-23, 2019

Location – Collegio Boccarini Conference Hall Adjacent to the Museo Civico Archeologico e Pinacoteca Edilberto Rosa Amelia, Italy

Held in the beautiful town of Amelia, Italy, the seat of ARCA’s summer-long Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, the Association’s annual conference consisted of association-hosted plenary sessions on Friday, June 21, 2019, followed by an opening cocktail later that same evening.  This networking meet and greet gave all Amelia conference attendees and speakers a relaxing moment to get to know one another outside the formalities of the conference venue.

At the heart of the conference were two days of panel sessions held on Saturday and Sunday, June 22-23, 2019 devoted to topics of common concern in the field.

The 2019 edition of the Amelia Conference included the following presenters and presentations:

“Investment Law and the Protection of Cultural Heritage: Harmony or Conflict?”
Alessandra Asteriti
Junior Professor of International Economic Law, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg

“All the Tools in the Tool Bag: Combating the International Trade in Stolen Antiquities”
Colonel Matthew Bogdanos
Chief, Antiquities Trafficking Unit, New York County District Attorney’s Office

“Pandora III: A European-Wide Operation to Combat the Illegal Cultural Goods Trade”
Richard Bronswijk
Sr. Inspector of the Art and Antiques Crime Unit, National Police of the Netherlands

“A Big Data Approach to the Online Market for Antiquities”
Fabien Curto Millet
Director of Economics, Google

“Anticipating the Future, Preserving the Past: Early Warning Intelligence Methodology in Service of Cultural Property Protection”
Zeynep Egeli
M.Sc., Candidate, Leiden University

“The Soft Law Regulation of the Art Market in Brazil and MERCOSUR”
Marcilio Franca
Prosecutor at the Prosecution Office at the Audit Court of Paraíba, Brazil
Professor of Public Law at the Federal University of Paraíba Brazil

“Repatriating Egypt’s Past: One Country’s Quest for the Restitution of its Looted Artifacts”
Shaaban Ahmed Abdel-Gawad Hassanien
Head of the Repatriation Department, Ministry of Antiquities, Egypt

“Growing the Movement: Bringing Cultural Heritage Protection to a Younger and Broader Audience”
Kirsten Hower
Social Media Manager, National Trust for Historic Preservation

“HeDAP (Heritage Documentation and Protection): A Tool to Fight the Illicit Traffic of Libyan and Tunisian Antiquities”
Anna Leone, Morgan Belzic, Samer Abdel Ghafour
Sponsoring Institution: Durham University

“The Circulating Artefacts platform: A British Museum Initiative Against the Looting and Trafficking of Pharaonic Antiquities”
Marcel Marée
Assistant Keeper in the Department of Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum

“The Intricacies of Dealing with World War II-era Claims”
Marc Masurovsky Cofounder, Holocaust Art Restitution Project

“Reverse Graffiti: A Case of Criminal Damage or a Clever Way around Anti-Graffiti Laws: A Comparative Study of German and UK Law”
Janine Meiser
Ph.D., Candidate, Queen Mary University of London

“Converting History Into Commodities. The Case of the Schøyen-Network”
Christopher Prescott
Director, The Norwegian Institute in Rome

“Unpacking the Hildebrand Gurlitt Art Collection: A Training Exercise in Understanding the Limitation of Policing in Art Crime Investigations”
Erna Sellhorn Lawyer, ARCA 2019

and

Mahar Chohan
Art Historian, ARCA 2019

“How Technologies are Changing the Way Art is Created, Collected and Traded”
Massimo Sterpi
Partner, Gianni, Origoni, Grippo, Cappelli & Partners Law Firm

“The Isabella Stewart Gardner Theft That Doesn’t Get Worldwide Attention: Italy’s Annunciation by Piermatteo Lauro de’ Manfredi da Amelia”
Lucilla Vignoli
Art Historian  

Each year ARCA’s Amelia Conference serves as an arena for intellectual and professional exchange and highlights the Association’s mission to facilitate a critical appraisal of the need for protection of art and heritage worldwide. Over the course of one weekend annually, ARCA’s summer conference serves as a forum to explore the indispensable role of detection, crime prevention, scholarly and criminal justice responses, at both the international and domestic level, in combatting all forms of art crime and the illicit trafficking in cultural property. 

For information about next year’s 2020 Amelia Conference please write to us at:

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italy.conference (at) artcrimeresearch.org