Mark is a reader in Near Eastern archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. He has an undergraduate degree in anthropology, and masters and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. As an archaeologist, Mark has worked in five countries in the Near East. His current work is focused on Iraqi Kurdistan, southern Iraq, and Qatar. He is on the editorial board of Social Science Computer Review and Iraq. His research focuses on understanding how the past environment shaped ancient human societies. He has written several books and research articles on the archaeology and history of the ancient Near East.

Erhan Gürer

Erhan is a translator and language teacher who has both Dutch and Turkish nationality. He sets examinations for Dutch secondary schools and has previously served as an advisor to the Turkish Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation as well as advising Dutch companies on doing business in Turkey. He compiled the first scientific Dutch-Turkish dictionary as a research associate at the University of Leiden, where he studied Turkish language and literature. He is a member of the literature commission at the Department of Culture in Rotterdam and has translated several books from Dutch into Turkish.

Rasha Hakki

Rasha, a Syrian-Palestinian archaeologist, fled Syria as a refugee in 2015 and now lives in the Netherlands. She graduated from Damascus University in archaeology in 2006. From 2004 to 2007, she contributed to a project to document the mosaics in Syrian museums in cooperation with the European Centre for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments in Thessaloniki, Greece. During the crisis, she moved to the museums section at the Directorate General of Museums and Antiquities, where she prepared lists of artefacts looted from the museums and sent them to Interpol for tracking purposes. She also cooperated with Damascus University to develop workshops for refugees and children to engage them in protecting cultural heritage.

David Hands

David is a television and film director, producer, editor and director of photography. Based in Cyprus, he started his film career in 1989 as a director of photography. From 1993 until 2005, he began working as a news cameraman, covering major news stores and conflicts in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East. In 2006, together with two colleagues, he formed Crewhouse Media, an international production company, directing and producing films, documentaries and PSAs. He holds a Masters Degree in Film and Television Production from Cambridge School of Art, UK. Since 2013, he has produced a number of films for Walk of Truth.

Khaled Hiatlih

Khaled is a Syrian-Palestinian archaeologist who left Syria in 2014 and is now living as a refugee in the Netherlands. He has a degree from BYU university in the U.S. and from Damascus University, where one of his tasks was to document Syrian mosaics at locations including the museum of Maarat al-Noman and Raqqa. These museums have since suffered frequent attacks, and many of the mosaics have been destroyed or looted. Khaled also developed teaching materials and workshops at Damascus University, where he educated students about the mosaics. He is working with the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums and Oxford University to use new technologies to repair and reconstruct destroyed archaeological sites, including a 3D reconstruction initiative in Palmyra.

Catherine Hickley

Catherine is a Berlin-based arts journalist specialized in Nazi-looted art. She studied French and German at London University, then spent a year in East Germany teaching English and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. She worked as a journalist in Budapest and Bern before beginning a 17-year career at Bloomberg News in 1997, first as a reporter covering German politics, then as Berlin bureau chief and from 2003, as the editor managing European government news. She later switched to arts writing at Bloomberg and has worked as a freelance translator and journalist since 2013. Her first book, The Munich Art Hoard: Hitler’s Dealer and His Secret Legacy, was published by Thames & Hudson in 2015.

Thomas R. Kline

Tom is a partner at the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners in Washington, D.C. He is responsible for a number of groundbreaking cases, including setting precedent in the law governing recovery of antiquities and Nazi-looted art. Tom advises clients on a wide variety of art and cultural property matters, including issues of ownership, theft, authenticity, breach of contract, and insurance. His first case in the field was litigating on behalf of the Church and Republic of Cyprus to recover stolen mosaics. Since 1989 he has specialized in cultural heritage-related litigation, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, and advice and counseling, representing governments, museums, churches, foundations, and families. A recognized authority on Holocaust-related art claims, Tom appeared before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States.

Marina Mkhitaryan

Marina was born in 1964 in Alaverdi, Armenia, to Greek and Armenian parents.  She received her PhD in Mathematical Physics in 1993 from Yerevan Physics Institute.  From 1994 to 1995 she conducted research at the University of Ghent in archeology.  From 1995 to 1997, she did post-doctoral studies in archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.  She started amateur photography in 2007, and has staged four exhibitions.  Her first two, in 2009 in Armenia and 2011 in New York, were dedicated to the Greeks of Armenia. The third, My Heart is in the Highlands, was dedicated to Armenia and Karabakh and was held in Shushi, Artsakh, in 2013. The fourth, Inspired by Armenia opened in Yeghiche Charents House-Museum, Yerevan.

Alexander Nagel

Originally from Berlin, Alex is a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He received an MA from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2003, and a PhD from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2010 for his work on Colors, Gilding and Painted Motifs in Persepolis: Approaching the Polychromy of Achaemenid Persian Architectural Sculpture, c. 520-330 BCE. Since 2009 he has curated a number of exhibitions and projects, taught at universities, and published on aspects of cultural heritage preservation in Greece, Iran, Yemen and the wider Middle East for many years.

Adelheid Roosen

Adelheid is artistic leader and director of the Netherlands-based theatre companies Adelheid|Female Economy and Zina. City neighbourhoods inspire her ongoing quest to shift the perspective we have on the ‘other,’ the apparent stranger. Her immersive and intimate approach make her a pioneer in the Dutch theatre scene. She is the director and writer of many acclaimed performances, among them the award-winning UrbanSafari, in which theatre makers are ‘adopted’ by local residents and live in their homes for two weeks to deepen contact and share life stories. Adelheid’s safari has become a successful export model, and was selected by the World Cities Culture Forum as a “transformational” project because of its power to change attitudes. In 2009, Adelheid received the Amsterdam Prize for her transboundary contribution to the arts and in 2012, the Proscenium prize for her oeuvre.

Wouter Veraart

Wouter studied law and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Before his appointment as Professor in 2009, he lectured in legal philosophy at the VU University and in legal history at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In Rotterdam, in 2005, he obtained his PhD degree (cum laude) on The Deprivation and Restitution of Property Rights during the Years of Occupation and Reconstruction in the Netherlands and in France. In his 2009 inaugural lecture, The Passion for a Mundane Legal Order, he focused on the legal consequences of forgetting and remembering as collective answers to injustice of the past.

Nick Kounoupias

Nick is a solicitor who founded Kounoupias IP, a London-based boutique intellectual property consultancy of which he is also CEO. He provides strategic guidance to businesses to help them understand, manage and protect their intellectual property in the U.K. and internationally. He also has an international reputation in the field of protecting cultural property and advises creative industries, academic institutions, law enforcement and government agencies in this area. In recognition of his contribution to the intellectual property community, Nick was appointed a Freeman of the City of London.

Roderik Colen

Roderik has worked for almost twenty years at Shell as a senior global strategy director and as supply chain manager. He is an active board member of various education programs, including the Erasmus University Rotterdam Master in Management Program and the German International School in The Hague. He is passionate about preserving our heritage and he advises Walk of Truth on structure and strategy.

Pam Reid

Pam is a high-tech entrepreneur who enjoys applying her deep technical and business knowledge to both for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises.  She is currently founder and CEO at Coviant Software, which offers Managed File Transfer solutions. Pam was also Chairman and CEO of Dovetail Software, which was acquired by IBM. She previously held various management positions during her 12-year tenure at Digital Equipment Corporation, and has provided strategic and operational consulting to a variety of organizations, including the Dutch Ministry of Transport. She has served on the boards of many charitable enterprises, including Somerville Homeless Coalition, ECOS Inc. and MassNet. Pam has an undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Master of Science in Management from MIT.

Claire Hutcheon

Claire is a retired British police officer with 30 years’ experience. She began working on general police duties at Kent police in 1986 and was promoted to Detective Constable in 1996. In 2003, she transferred to the Metropolitan Police Service and was promoted to the rank of Detective Sergeant in 2006. In 2011, she was put in charge of the specialist Art and Antiques Unit at New Scotland Yard, becoming the contact point for cultural property crimes. She is an expert on the illicit art trade in London and has attended numerous group meetings at Interpol and Europol. She has also advised the U.K. All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, for which Walk of Truth provides the secretariat.