Professor Holly Cusack-McVeigh will discuss “Recovering the Past: A Collaborative Approach to Repatriation and Social Justice” at a Nov. 12 event hosted by the IUPUI Center for Translating Research Into Practice.

Cusack-McVeigh, an associate professor of anthropology and museum studies in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, tells the story of an FBI investigation that resulted in its largest single recovery of illegally looted cultural objects — and how she and her students are participating in the repatriation of thousands of these stolen objects.

On April 1, 2014, after months of investigative work and intensive planning, FBI agents knocked on the door of a private collector in rural Indiana. This was the start of a complex, multiyear investigation that resulted in the recovery of several thousand objects of cultural heritage. The collection, noted by scholars and agents alike for its “astounding global and temporal scope,” included material culture from places as diverse as Colombia, China, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Italy, Canada and the United States.

In a virtual presentation from noon to 1 p.m. Nov. 12, Cusack-McVeigh will tell the story of how this investigation became a unique and ongoing teaching opportunity that engages students with an FBI antiquities case (art crime team) and the repatriation of looted objects.

Register on the event page.