Paleonet: Seeking interviewees for the TRANSFORM project

[Yates, Donna (STRAFR)]

Good day everyone,

I am a sociologists in the Faculty of Law at Maastricht University. A few months back I emailed this list about the European Research Council-funded TRANSFORM project. The goal of this project is to understand how relationships between people and objects form, and the role those relationships play in the creation of networks of all kinds, in particular criminal networks. To do this, we are focusing on three types of "collectible" objects that also have a scientific component: antiquities/cultural objects (my specialty), collectible wildlife, and paleontological material. I’m contacting you all about the latter.

Due to travel restrictions I’ve had to reformulate parts of the project and get creative. Instead of conducting fieldwork, site visits, and in-person interviews this year, I am shifting to what can be done from my desk. Less fun, but a good excuse to talk to as many people like yourselves as I can.

I’m looking for volunteers who are willing to do a short interview on this topic either via video call by email.

My questions are about the differences between academic and commercial excavations; about fossil sites themselves; how you navigate law and policy; and what happens next after fossil material is removed from the ground. I'm also always very interested to hear how people like yourselves initially became interested in palaeontology. The "big picture" of this project is on crime related to fossil material, and I am certainly interested in hearing any thoughts or experiences you have with that, but right now I want to know what finding and interacting with palaeontological material is like. Literally everyone here has a story to tell about that!

This is probably a good place to note that my PhD is actually in archaeology, even though I am now in a law faculty. I'm a trained field archaeologist so, beyond the obvious differences in our disciplines, I do have a strong understanding of fieldwork in general so hopefully my questions aren't too silly.. I've also conducted pilot research on this topic in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.

My project’s website is under construction but I have our information sheets and details of our ethical approval up at traffickingtransformations.org<http://traffickingtransformations.org/>. I am happy to answer questions and I appreciate you taking the time to read this.  Please do contact me directly at d.yates at maastrichtuniversity.nl<mailto:d.yates at maastrichtuniversity.nl>. I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards,

Donna Yates

--
Dr Donna Yates
Associate Professor, Criminal Law and Criminology
Faculty of Law
Maastricht University

AnonymousSwissCollector.com<http://anonymousswisscollector.com/>
TraffickingCulture.org<http://traffickingculture.org/>
StolenGods.org<http://stolengods.org/>
CultureCrime.org<http://culturecrime.org/>
twitter.com/drdonnayates<http://twitter.com/drdonnayates>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.paleonet.org/pipermail/paleonet/attachments/20200922/1044709c/attachment.htm>