In the months leading up to the start of the programmes, this year’s lecturers are being interviewed about their courses and teaching with ARCA in Italy.  In this interview we meet Dr. Saskia Hufnagel, a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary, a Professor at the University of Sydney Law School and Co-Director of the Sydney Institute of Criminology. Her research concerns global law enforcement cooperation, transnational and comparative criminal justice and art crime. She lectures on the Art, Business and Law LLM (CCLS).  Her particular interests are international and regional legal patterns of cross-border policing as well as the detection, investigation and prosecution of art crimes in the UK, Germany and Australia. Saskia is a qualified German legal professional and accredited specialist in criminal law.

Can you tell us something about your background?

I started off as a German Criminal Lawyer in a little town close to the Dutch border and in my practice I got very interested in cross-border crime and law enforcement dealing with it.  As luck would have it, I received a scholarship funded jointly by the European Commission and the Australian National University to pursue a PhD in the area of international law enforcement cooperation.  After my PhD, I spent some time as a researcher in Queensland and then moved to Queen Mary University of London to teach criminal law, policing, and comparative criminal justice.  In 2023 I was offered a Professorship in Australia and am now teaching and researching at the University of Sydney Law School.

And how did you get involved with ARCA? 

After I had finished my PhD, one of my examiners, Prof Duncan Chappell, asked me whether I would write with him about a German forger's case (Beltracchi) that also included international law enforcement challenges and, at the time, a lot of the reports on it were mainly available in German.  This is how I got into art crime and visited ARCA for the first time in 2011.  

It was such a great multidisciplinary hub for art crime research and it was so exciting to be exchanging ideas with both academics and practitioners specialising in fields much more interesting than my own, such as archaeology, art history, criminology, economics, forensic sciences and countless others.  People were so friendly and welcoming and happy to work even with boring lawyers that in the past 14 years, I only missed two of the conferences.

What is the purpose of the course you are teaching this summer?

My part of the teaching is a necessary evil as knowing the legal foundations of cultural heritage law is really important for many areas of art crime research.  I will go through the international legal set up of cultural property protection with students, discuss the differences between such protection in times of war and peace, look at the protection of moveable and immoveable cultural heritage and go through some basics of criminal law comparatively between various jurisdictions to highlight criminal law issues in relation to fraud, theft, vandalism, money laundering, tax-, import- and export-offences and many other crimes.

What is it like in Amelia?

Amelia is like a picture book Italian village with wonderful restaurants, bars and shops. The people are very friendly and forgiving with silly foreigners like me who do not speak a word of Italian. The longer you stay in Amelia, the more you will love it!

What is so special about this program?

There is no other program like ARCA.  University programs will situate a course mainly within one discipline, so you rarely get the same variety of interdisciplinary knowledge taught within this program elsewhere.  Also, ARCA has contacts to some of the most knowledgeable academics and practitioners in the field and brings them together from all around the world to teach the programme.

Which course would you like to follow yourself?

I would love to do Lynda Albertson’s course and discover more about data sets and data interpretation and how to harness art crime databases! Students were always gushing about it and telling me about all the possibilities for research they discovered in her course. It made me so jealous!

Any advice for the participants that come to Amelia?

Work hard and play hard! Amelia is a once in a lifetime opportunity to study with a very diverse group of students, people you would otherwise never – or not very likely – meet in your life. Make friends, support each other studying, have fun, enjoy the wide variety of teachers and subjects and take home a great deal of knowledge and a new little family.

In closing I would add that Dr. Hufnagel has co-edited a marvellous book in the field titled The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime featuring articles from many people working in this important field.  If you would like to learn with her directly, there is still time to apply for the ARCA program and speak with her directly this summer. 

By:  Edgar Tijhuis