Despite lingering anxiety that it might be Russian propaganda, as it has been announced on Facebook while the vacancy is still visible on the website, it is not fake news. I am absolutely delighted to say that, for three years from early 2019, I will be a post-doctoral fellow in cultural heritage and conflicts at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, University of Oslo [Det Norske Institutt i Roma (DNIR), Universitetet i Oslo (UiO)]. I’ll share more in due time, but here’s the official announcement:
Dr. Hardy (Twitter/blog) is a cultural property criminologist, who studies illicit trafficking of cultural objects, political violence against cultural property and other uses of cultural heritage in conflicts and crises, with an interest in open-source analysis of cultural property crime. He has worked for the American University of Rome, UNESCO, Koç University, ICOM and the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). As an expert for ARCA, he participates in capacity-building training by UNESCO for law enforcement agents and cultural heritage professionals in the Middle East and North Africa.
As part of the Heritage Experience Initiative (HEI) at the University of Oslo, Hardy will be based at the Norwegian Institute in Rome. His project will examine antiquities trafficking during political violence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It will explore the scale, organisation and practice of looting; interconnections of antiquities trafficking and art forgery with drugs trafficking, arms trafficking and organised crime; “conflict antiquities trafficking” of cultural objects to finance political violence; subsistence trafficking of cultural objects by asylum seekers; and politics and propaganda in relation to trafficking and policing. In so doing, it will support efforts to stem the flows of cultural goods out of crisis zones and illicit finances into conflict economies.
conflict antiquities 