Research Log, Cape Town, 7-23 August 2017

Posted on 21 August 2017

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An experiment in being open about my daily academic doings

For about three weeks I will be visiting the University of Cape Town thanks to a generous grant from The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. While I am here I will be collaborating with Annette Hübschle-Finch to combine her work on wildlife smuggling and mine on antiquities smuggling into an interesting journal paper and, more importantly, a major grant proposal. The goal is to have most of both done by the time I leave on 24 August. Rough, but doable. This is my sole commitment (outside master’s students writing support) during my visit, and I need to make the most of it.

So in the spirit of radical transparency and radical accountability, I’m going to post my daily research log to this blog. I’ll update this every day that I am in Cape Town, with no work on Saturdays of course. Don’t expect greatness, just bullet points and numbers. A skeleton of what I did each day to make sure I actually do it.

21 August 2017

  • Compiled Culture Crime News, posted it on the blog, sent it as an email, and uploaded it to news.culturecrime.org and to stolengods.org
  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Organised grant writing notes
  • Wrote 1000+ words towards the grant
  • Reformatted the grant draft, shared it on Dropbox with Co-Is
  • Wrote a reference for a student
  • Booked a flight to Washington DC for next month
  • Wrote admin emails regarding the PGCert
  • Updated personal Culture Crime News database (up to date)

20 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Wrote 600 words towards European Commission bid
  • Make sample survey for European Commission bid
  • Made sample interview pro forma for European Commission bid
  • Read 2 chapters of a master’s dissertation and sent comments to the student
  • Read 3 chapters of a master’s dissertation and sent comments to the student
  • Email communication with current and prospective master’s students
  • Logged Carnegie Trust expense receipts for the past week

18 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Responded to last minute postgraduate questions about essays
  • Met with a future student on the PGCert in Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime
  • Attended a department coffee gathering in Criminology at University of Cape Town.
  • Visited Kirstenbosch with Annette Hübscle to look at cycad security
  • Wrote 800 words towards the European Commission proposal concerning new technologies to deal with antiquities trafficking
  • Admin related to travel funding

17 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Read George E. Marcus (1995) Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.
  • Had Coffee with Annette Hübscle and visiting master’s students from Yale
  • Attended a talk given by the visiting master’s students from Yale concerning rhino protection in Namibia and Botswana
  • Gave a statement to a Norwegian reporter regarding a theft from the Bergen Museum.
  • Had a 1 hour+ phone conversation with researchers with the US General Accountability Office (GAO) about the illicit traffic in Native American cultural goods
  • Admin tasks related to master’s students
  • Admin tasks related to research

16 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Wrote 1021 words towards grant
  • Read 2 chapters of a master’s dissertation and sent comments to the student
  • Reviewed and commented on student CV
  • Wrote interim report for Blended Online Learning Development project
  • Responded to inquiries about the PGCert in Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime
  • Dealt with other administrative tasks

15 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Had coffee and grant discussion with Annette
  • Reviewed and commented on draft of the European Commission bid
  • Participated in 1.5 hour conference call regarding the European Commission bid
  • Read “Knowledge and valuation in markets” (2006) by Patrik Aspers
  • Organised past writing and collected all partially-finished projects in one place to share with potential co-authors
  • Dealt with other administrative tasks

14 August 2017

11 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Wrote 1001 words towards “contested illegalities” paper
  • Wrote 834 words towards grant proposal and sent them to colleagues
  • Wrote a recommendation letter for a student
  • Dealt with some administrative issues re: student registration
  • Responded to several student info requests and two info requests from colleagues
  • Booked tickets (after considerable difficulty) to Robben Island
  • Took photos of contested art at University of Cape Town campus

10 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Made an outline for “contested illegalities” paper
  • Read “Contested illegality: Processing the Trade Prohibition of Rhino Horn” (2017) by Annette Hübschle
  • Wrote draft introduction to “contested illegalities” paper (775 words)
  • Started “types of contested illegalities” section for paper (242 words)
  • Read a chapter of a master’s dissertation and sent comments to the student
  • Sent some Master’s-student-related correspondence

9 August 2017

  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Queued recent stolengods.org database entries for Twitter for the rest of the week
  • Looked over a previous grant application to develop a structure for current European Research Grant proposal and made a rough outline of headings
  • Created a list of features of the type of trafficked objects that I wish to focus on in this grant; what distinguishes them; what makes them unique; this was to serve as a starting off point for open ended writing on the subject
  • Read “The Cultural Biography of Objects” (1999) By Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall
  • Read “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process” (1986) by Igor Kopytoff
  • Read “Agency, Biography, and Objects” (2006) by Janet Hoskins
  • Put preprint of “What is Grey about the Grey Market in Antiquities” (2017) on SocArXiv
  • Updated the publications on my ORCID profile
  • Did writing tying the type of trafficked object I want to study to the idea of object biography both theoretically and as a methodological way forward
  • Wrote a total of 1355 words towards the grant

8 August 2017

  • Compiled Culture Crime News, posted it on the blog, sent it as an email, and uploaded it to news.culturecrime.org and to stolengods.org
  • Read the antiquities and art crime news, queued them for Twitter for the day using Buffer
  • Read “Fluid interfaces between flows of rhino horn” (2017) by Annette Hübschle-Finch
  • Met with Annette Hübschle-Finch and toured the University of Cape Town campus
  • Had a series of initial discussions about directions for grants and papers
  • Looked through the documentation for possible grants to apply to for applicability
  • Created a work plan for the next 20 days, with set goals
  • Read two chapters of a master’s dissertation and sent comments to the student

7 August 2017

  • Arrived in Cape Town and settled in
  • Visited the Rhodes Memorial and did some writing on #RhodesMustFall